


King's Carapace

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, M/M, Mecha, Military, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I couldn’t resist trying my hand at a Pacific Rim-inspired robots vs. monsters AU.  Snake is the ace mech pilot at the forefront of humanity’s last stand against an alien invasion.  Otacon is the engineer chattering in Snake’s ear.  Giant monster battles (and ill-timed affections) ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exoskeleton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has probably been done before, but aliens + mecha + Snake/Otacon = an ineffable project in my book. I hope I can add my own flavor to it and entertain ya’ll for a bit~ Happy reading!

It always seemed to be some scrawny, middle class kid was in charge. Nerds will inherit the earth and whatnot. He had a queasy smile that Dave responded to with a thinning of his own lips, a digging in at the corners rather than a curl upward. Awkwardness ensued, a certain pressing awareness that this was Dave’s fate, to learn from people who had probably never seen a dead body in their life, unless it had been gussied up and pickled first.

“Hi! I’m Hal Emmerich.” To the guy’s credit, he offered Dave a handshake with the smile, but Commander Miller talked over it. Emmerich’s hand fell uselessly and his smile grew bigger with nerves.

“This is Snake,” said Miller. He gestured to Dave like a person might gesture to a very nice car they were trying to introduce casually but actually bragging about. “Congratulations, doctor, you’ve got the best pilot around.”

Emmerich’s face brightened with a certain guileless honesty. He was excited because it was implied he should be excited. His social skills matched his lab coat. He was probably wearing a pocket protector.

“I’ll let you two get acquainted,” Miller said, with a sneering glance up at the big metallic elephant in the room. 

As soon as the Commander left, Emmerich’s smile went slightly manic in desperation and he said, “His name is Tetsujin. The mech, I mean.”

Snake glanced up with only half the enthusiasm of Miller. Hulking in the shadows of the hangar, not far from the grated metal catwalk under their feet, stood the largest mech Dave had ever seen in his service—a mech its inventor had apparently nicknamed “Tetsujin.” Even in the gritty orange glow of its surrounding floodlights, the colossal humanoid suit was too big not to obscure its own extremities in bulks of shadow, its bluish metal armor intermittently reflecting light and going indistinct in darkness. This was still a prototype, something far too advanced for the facility it was sitting in, a very large fish in a small pond. It rose three stories, and Dave tried to get a glimpse of the cockpit but it was like trying to make eye contact through the chin of a much, much taller person who hadn’t noticed you.

“It’s not a complex system,” Emmerich was saying. “Er… I haven’t finished reading your file yet, but you’ve had experience with short-range mechs in Zanzibar Land, yes? They’re much smaller, but they’re the same basic principal… Just ‘cus Tetsujin’s bigger doesn’t mean he’s harder to maneuver, really… You’ll probably do great.”

Suddenly, Emmerich was offering his hand again, adamant about that handshake or perhaps in nervousness forgetting that he’d already tried once.

“Snake is a codename, right?” he said. “You can call me ‘Otacon’.”

A puff of air exited Dave’s nose despite himself, an almost-snort almost-laugh sort of thing, and his mouth finally curved. 

He accepted the handshake _firmly_ , just to mess with “Otacon”s head, but found the return grip to be strong as well, and enthusiastic. Something like triumph flashed across the engineer’s unassuming face, before he turned to properly introduce his new fighter pilot to his creation.

Tetsujin watched on stoically, as if waiting his turn.

x

Dave had only enjoyed his early retirement in Alaska for a couple years—that is, if you could call shacking up in the woods with your ptsd and no humans whatsoever for miles around “enjoyment”—before he saw the news broadcast that shook the entire world from the confines of his tiny television. Dave was pretty sure at one point he’d actually said the words “the only thing that will bring me back to the field now is the apocalypse.”

Trust the world to actually start ending, huh?

He remembered that broadcast very clearly. He was sitting on the sort of leather sofa that’s been torn to strips by dog claws scrambling across the cushions; the only bits of actual leather remaining held the cold of the house, making it an altogether pretty uncomfortable sofa. But Dave didn’t need a comfortable sofa so much as he needed a pack of cigarettes, a couple of empty beer cans for ashtrays, and a husky snoozing across his lap.

The rerun of The Johnny Carson Show he was watching started buzzing loudly and turned abruptly to the president of the United States. Gray, the husky, whined and his ears went twitching.

“Good evening, Americans.” The president’s face did not bode well for a good evening.

As the commander in chief explained the upcoming crisis with stiff calm, a series of bizarre images played beside him, helicopter views over a gray ocean. Something big was in the water.

“…We have been tracking the movements of the extraterrestrial organism since its landing… Over 120 yards in length… We have confirmed that the creature is approaching the Fukushima prefecture at an alarming rate… International effort to destroy… Coastal cities urged to evacuate…”

After the president’s explanation, the same footage played again dubbed poorly into Spanish. This was bad. All across the world, every tv screen had some country’s leader giving this same cursory information. Dave knew immediately this was worse than something hitting Japan. The subtext, what Mr. President had declined to mention, was that this would not be the last “extraterrestrial organism” nor the last country hit. The military didn’t talk about massive crises beforehand unless they couldn’t fight them.

And they couldn’t.

Reporters took over the coverage, barely believable images surfacing of the enormous military attack against this mammoth creature. It did nothing. Normal artillery didn’t _work_.

The whole world could only sit and watch as a sea monster crawled up onto Japan and destroyed cities in its wake. The projected casualty toll became a number at the corner of the newscasts, constantly rising.

Dave sat and smoked through a whole pack before the expected knocking at his door startled the dogs.

Ex super soldiers come in handy in a Biblical crisis.

x

Otacon led Dave up a final flight of stairs, one of the engineer’s sneakers flopping loudly because the sole was coming off, causing him to half-trip just before the landing. They were level with Tetsujin’s head now, a giant helmet-like structure with an orangeish screen wrapped around the front like a visor, the reinforced “windshield” if you will. Otacon’s chattering had turned into a recitation of Dave’s file, as if that merited some form of conversation.

“The mechs in Zanzibar Land—I don’t actually have full clearance on that obviously, I’m not in on the human vs human war stuff, ha ha—but those were the old model, right? The 008s. Couldn’t even fly. More like tanks, really. Pretty useless against our current… nemeses, I guess you could call them?” 

Dave just sort of grunted in affirmation, pitying the guy but not sure how to get a word in edgewise in this conversation. Otacon approached a control panel on the landing as he spoke, swiped a keycard, pressed some buttons absently. 

“ _Flying_ , that’s the important part. And the boom cannons. Flying, big-gunned 008s (those are called 009s, super creative, right?), those are our only hope and even then the aliens are still kicking our ass… We need to go _bigger_. So voila, 010, Tetsujin! He’s pretty impressive, huh? It’s weird, I never really expected to be like… The Last Hope or whatever… I guess that’s you more than me though ha ha.” He cleared his throat to end his last weirdly sheepish laugh and nodded to the mech. “Let’s go inside, shall we?” 

He palmed the largest button on the panel—of course a big red one—and with a great hydraulic sigh Tetsujin’s visor rose, opening the cockpit. Otacon motioned for Dave to climb a last, rusty ladder up to the entrance in the mech’s head.

“The cockpit’s only big enough for one person,” Otacon explained, pushing up his glasses. “Don’t worry. It’s pretty comfy in there, I promise.”

Dave did what he did best and obeyed, the ladder wheezing under his weight. He took no time to marvel at the sheen of the blue armor before him, but instead pressed a hand against the lip of the entrance and hoisted himself inside.

The cockpit was definitely snug. Dave found himself in a black chair surrounded by panels, equal parts familiar and foreign.

“I’m closing you up!” Otacon shouted from below, and rumblingly the visor fell again, locking Dave in. Automatically, a harness lowered and Dave buckled up, immobile and confined. 

For a split moment all was dark, and despite himself Dave’s heart pounded in his chest, a claustrophobia fueled by bad memories… Then the panels lit up blue and a crackling intercom sounded with Otacon’s voice.

“Can you hear me, Snake?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, so you can actually talk! I can hear you too. This is the Codec. You probably already know how that works, though, huh?”

There wasn’t much room for Dave’s body to move, but his arms had full range of the controls. Without pressing anything, he ghosted his fingers over the panels, picking out the familiar bits from the 008s. Like riding a bike, as they say.

The steering levers sat low in front of him, one for each hand.

“Is this a flying lesson, Otacon?”

“No no no! He’s not ready to fly yet… Or rather _you’re_ not. I just wanted you to get a feel for what it’s like.”

“You sure you aren’t just showing off?”

There was a bit of a stunned silence, perhaps actual hurt, before Otacon processed that Snake was joking and laughed loud enough to make the Codec crackle fiercely. There was relief in the noise.

“Tetsujin is my baby after all. But now he’s yours too.”

“I’m not sure I know you that well.”

“I didn’t mean it like that! Geez, but you’re ok? No stress reactions to being in there?”

“I’m fine,” Dave lied.

“Perfect. We’ve got clearance to give you the full tutorial as soon as you’ve finished adjusting around here.”

Is that what they called it now, adjusting? For all that had happened in the past, Dave felt like he already fit here, more than he’d ever fit in Alaska. It was like this pressing dread in his throat was the only true reality, like those moments he might have called peace had just been a dazed wandering. Everything slid back into terrible focus when he was Snake.

“Ok, I’ll open you up again,” said Otacon. “I just wanted you to see it.”

The visor rose and Snake leaned over the side to peer down at Otacon below, who was grinning at him with an entirely different sort of grin than before. Actual delight rather than a tic. It was a pretty dorky expression, actually, with teeth and with a hand scratching absently at the scruff on his chin, but it was kind of endearing. At least less annoying.

“Whaddaya think?” Otacon called up.

“It’s a pretty big baby,” Snake replied. “Funny family we’ll make.”

Otacon’s response was inaudible, but he shook his head as he maneuvered his little control panel, covering his smile with his other hand adjusting the bridge of his glasses.

It was almost like _Nice to meet you_.

x

After the debrief with Otacon, Miller returned to finish Snake’s larger tour of the facilities, as well as to hand him over to Dr. Hunter, their frankly rather sexy chief medical adviser. She ran Snake’s fitness tests and took his blood, which was rather less sexy. She also had a habit of talking to Miller as if Snake wasn’t in the room.

“He’s in perfect physical condition. I’ll be administering the injection now,” she said, scribbling something calmly onto a notepad before turning to the white countertop where she began preparing a syringe.

Miller smiled at Snake, a sharp and fake sort of smile that was meant to placate him. Snake wasn’t that stupid, but it also wasn’t his place to call bullshit. Miller was his superior, even if he did wear sunglasses indoors.

“These injections will be a regular occurrence now that you’ll be piloting 010,” Miller said. “It’s a bit like steroids, but healthier of course. It’s to ensure you don’t wear yourself down.”

Snake didn’t ask any questions, because that wasn’t his job. Part of him didn’t even care.

Dr. Hunter smiled somewhere past Snake and gently held his bicep while patting his skin with a cold alcohol cotton wad. She administered the shot. Painless. 

Afterwards, Miller led Snake back to the barracks and his room.

“You’ll start regular training with Dr. Emmerich tomorrow,” Miller said. “We thank you for your service, Snake. I know it’s difficult for you to be here.”

That sounded like something somebody who had no clue would say, and the continued manipulations of Miller’s expressions supported that. He even patted Snake on the back, overly hard.

“Get a good night’s rest. World-saving starts at zero five hundred.”

When he left and Snake sank to his cot, Snake realized this was the first time he’d been alone all day. It was something to get used to again, after Alaska. He wasn’t tired, though. Maybe it was the injection, but his feet tapped with a coiled up energy in his stomach. He thought briefly he might masturbate to calm down, but then with a grimace remembered he was alone but not _alone_. There was some other soldier behind the thin wall to his back. There were cameras in the halls.

Snake had never had a great grasp of identity—hence why his dream life was to live alone in the wilderness rather than to sit around working on his humanity—and he slipped back into this cooped-up lack of individualism surprisingly well. But it was still grating. He missed his dogs.

He fished his Lucky Strikes out of his small bag of personals and smoked instead, late into the night.

Welcome home.

x

Otacon was not a morning person, and also not a very good teacher. Snake became intimately aware of this throughout the week, growing into an expert on deciphering Otacon’s tired techno babble into useable piloting instructions. Partly Otacon’s lack of professionalism was a breath of fresh air. (He would even sometimes sneak Snake donuts.) Partly it was annoying. Snake was finding it mysteriously hard to hate him, though. In comparison to pretty much everybody else, Otacon was almost nice company.

It wasn’t long at all before Snake was in Tetsujin’s cockpit again, this time watching as the ceiling of the hangar opened above him, letting in sunlight and blue sky.

Otacon was chattering on the Codec. Snake wasn’t paying attention until he caught the word ‘countdown’.

“A countdown’s only going to make you nervous, Otacon,” Snake said.

He was surprised to hear Commander Miller’s voice in response. This was the first time the Codec had taken more than Otacon’s channel.

“Why do you call him Otacon?” Miller asked.

“It means Otaku Convention,” said Otacon nervously. Apparently he hadn’t been expecting the commander either. “It’s a codename.”

“You’re not a secret soldier, Dr. Emmerich, everyone knows your name.”

“Countdown, Otacon,” said Snake. He’d been planning on just flying whenever he felt like it because a countdown really would serve no other purpose than to make Otacon nervous, but with Miller watching it was different. He didn’t want Otacon to look bad at his job, even if he kind of was.

“Ten!” Otacon squeaked, and started down.

Tetsujin had already been undocked and stood ready. With a subtle motion of the steering levers, Snake tilted Tetsujin’s head upward to look at the sky above.

“Two… One… Go!”

For a moment the Codec went to static as power shot to the thrusters in Tetsujin’s feet. Snake grunted and gripped the levers reflexively, the g-force of rapidly ascending pinning him to the chair.

Blue. Sky. Snake stopped his climb jarringly and took in his bearings, spotting the hangar already matchbox car-sized below.

The Codec came back.

“Excellent, Snake!” Miller.

“How was it? Are you ok?” Otacon.

“I’m fine,” said Snake, his heart in his throat but easing back down.

Tetsujin hovered in the air effortlessly. Snake experimented, moving the mech’s arms and legs individually and getting a feel for the different motions. The controls were much smoother than his old 008 had ever been. He tried not to think about how small he felt in here with this panoramic view of sky and outstretched land underneath him. The sea wasn’t far off to his right.

“Alright. Time to go through those maneuvers we studied,” said Otacon. “Might as well do ‘em in order.”

These maneuvers had been fed to Snake with a side order of bad jokes by Otacon, the past week spent going over hand-drawn diagrams of Tetsujin in various stages of action. Those technical drawings came to life now as Snake flew, spun, rolled, evaded imaginary attacks. His combat training mixed with Otacon’s haphazard control teachings to make Tetsujin perform impressive combat feats in the air, kicks and punches, blocks and counters. Despite the massive size, Tetsujin moved fluidly, like a real human body, like Snake was actually three stories tall and made of blue metal. He could reach the speeds of a fighter jet, his thrusters howling behind the sound barrier. Otacon had proudly claimed he could even go into space. In theory.

Otacon took him through the exercises with typical enthusiasm and wild praise. The adrenaline was getting to Snake, coaxing a tiny crooked smile out of him. Miller, however, grew impatient.

“Try out those guns,” the commander said, interrupting a stream of useless platitudes from Otacon after Snake’s latest barrel roll. Otacon shut up immediately.

Snake had almost forgotten Miller was there.

He raised one of Tetsujin’s arms, palm facing outward towards the ocean and endless expanses of air. Guns. Right. This wasn’t a joyride. His heart was starting to pound again for a different reason.

“Preparing boom cannons,” he said to a delighted sound from Miller. He punched a button to his side and slid a dial, and energy hummed in Tetsujin’s palm, a blue-white ball of crackling power that shook the entire cockpit.

“Fire!” Was that Snake’s voice or Miller’s or both in unison?

Snake fired and the blast went pummeling into the air, a clean enormous beam of energy that gored a cloud, exploded it into white wisps, and kept on going as far as Snake could see… Tetsujin’s entire body shook, a buzzing clattering behind the roar of the beam, and suddenly Snake’s body remembered things, his ears remembered things, and he found himself two years in the past.

_The walls of the 008 are shaking violently, screens flashing, a sparking panel hissing smoke in Dave’s eyes. Screaming over the Codec. Some nightmarish combination of static and his best friends’ dying agonies. His ears are ringing. Boom! Rumbling. Where is Frank? Dave’s trying to see through the murky visor. In front of him, a mangled humanoid machine lies with a broken-in face. A human is in that face. Human gore is between the cracks. Codec shrieking out a lost signal. Dave’s eardrums stinging. Smoke, can’t breathe. Trapped. Strapped in. The panel lights flickering out and the cockpit going dark. Panic. His friends are dead. Everyone is dead and he’s going to die here alone in his own metal coffin, suffocating._

Like so many times before, the scenes replayed in Snake’s head and in front of his eyes and his body froze, this time without the comforting barks of his dogs in some shack in Alaska, this time without a wet muzzle against the back of his neck to bring him back to reality. He was so confined here in this tiny cockpit, strapped in, trapped.

Bile rose in Snake’s tightening throat. _Gray Fox!_

“Snake, are you alright?” It was Otacon’s voice. Like a dog nose at his spine. “It sounds like you’re panting.”

“Fine.” Snake couldn’t find his breath. He’d cut off the cannons but his hands were still shaking, knuckles white on the steering. Tetsujin was still and quiet now, but the vibrations seemed to stay with Snake, wracking his entire body. His brain was playing tricks on him again. His traumatized, messed up brain.

“We’ll be sending up some 009s in a moment,” said Miller, “for practice with—“

“Snake, do you need to come back?” Otacon cut in. 

Before Snake could swallow enough times to get out an answer safely, Miller decisively responded to the interruption.

“This is a member of FOXHOUND, doctor, we don’t need to baby him.”

“I just think…” Otacon’s words petered out, and Snake was sure that would be the end of it.

He was wrong.

With a surprising steel in his voice Otacon continued. “You want my expertise, and it’s this: he shouldn’t be up there if something’s the matter.”

“Are you ordering him back?” Miller asked, clearly a challenge.

Otacon quavered but didn’t back down. “Y-yes!”

There was a long silence, filled with professional tensions, and then finally Miller gave a cold clipped “You’re in charge, doctor,” and his channel went quiet.

“Come back, Snake,” said Otacon, and then he went quiet as well, leaving Snake alone to coax Tetsujin back to his place in the hangar, into comforting familiarity. Snake wasn’t entirely sure how he did it. It was like his hands and body moved on their own, despite the whirling dizziness in his eyes and the way his lungs couldn’t seem to fill up right.

Tetsujin was docked. Then, after long nauseous moments, his visor opened, and Snake was surprised to find Otacon at the top of the ladder. Otacon reached over to take Snake’s bicep, muttering to himself, then felt Snake’s pulse under his jaw. Snake batted him away, a flimsy gesture that Otacon ignored.

“You’re in a cold sweat... What the heck happened?” Otacon asked.

Snake spit out a mess of words that didn’t come out right.

“Huh?” said Otacon.

“Shouldn’t have called me back,” Snake hissed, surprising himself and Otacon with venom. Why was he suddenly angry? Angry at how fucked up he was? Angry that he might not be able to do this fucked up job because of his damn brain?

“Easy.” Otacon’s glasses slid down his nose. “Look… I might not be some military guy, but I know you can’t do this right now. I’m not gonna let you crash this very expensive mech.” An instant regret crossed Otacon’s face for saying that and he bit his lip. It looked like he was going to apologize, but then shouts came from down on the catwalk.

“We’ll take it from here, Dr. Emmerich.” It was a woman… Dr. Hunter?

“He needs a second, Naomi!”

“I don’t think you understand what he needs.”

“He just needs a second, that’s all!”

Snake was already hoisting himself shakily out of his seat though, much to Otacon’s despair.

“That’s not how this works, Otacon,” Snake grunted.

Otacon’s expression was hard to read but he looked weirdly devastated. He gripped Snake’s bicep again, firmly, like their first handshake, then let go and obediently began down the ladder out of Snake’s way. Snake took a number of deep breaths, then started down himself.

For once Otacon was quiet and Snake avoided looking at him as Dr. Hunter and her team took Snake away to the medical wing. Two big guys got him under the elbows and wound up holding him up for the most part as his legs turned to jelly. They were pretty rough dudes.

Snake was expecting a nasty psych evaluation that he would inevitably fail. Ptsd, what a plot twist. Instead, he found himself hurried onto a table with Dr. Hunter preparing another injection.

She looked uncharacteristically stressed. A strand of greasy hair had fallen over her face and she kept blowing at it rather than brushing it behind her ear. She was surprisingly gentle, however, when she rolled up Snake’s sleeve and swabbed his arm.

“You’ll feel much better,” she said, and injected him.

For a split moment it almost felt like Snake’s heart stopped… then picked up a calmer beat. A strange vertigo engulfed him as the world stopped spinning and came back into focus. He was breathing, in and out. He was aware of everything right down to the tingling pain where Dr. Hunter’s assistants had dragged him around. The world was sharp and hyper-colored, air entered his body and oxygenized his system, muscles spasmed slightly then hardened…

Then everything was back to normal.

Huh.

“That’s one hell of a ‘steroid’,” he muttered, his voice still a bit rough.

A couple of creases pinched between her eyebrows and she blew the hair out of her face again. “You’re fine to go,” she said, bustling about still, throwing out the used syringe, taking off her gloves with a snap. “Please go eat something at the canteen.”

No psych evaluation. Snake actually did want to ask about that, but right now it felt like it would jeopardize his position. If he wanted to do this mission, he had to keep his mouth shut.

He had no idea why he wanted to do this mission so badly.

“Thanks,” he said, standing gingerly but finding that his legs were fine, that he was at full strength.

Dr. Hunter just nodded and threw out her gloves.

“I’m just doing my job,” she said, and the lid of the small metal trashbin closed with a clang.

x

Lessons with Otacon were strained the next day. He kept tiptoeing around Snake as if he wanted to say something, and it was inordinately pissing Snake off.

At Otacon’s request they weren’t going back into Tetsujin today, just going over the same schematics they’d gone over already. Otacon brought donuts and Snake refused them. Otacon really was pretty useless, wasn’t he?

Over a thrice repeated explanation of Tetsujin’s escape procedures, Otacon pushed up the bridge of his glasses and unexpectedly crouched next to the chair Snake was sitting in, so they were uncomfortably at eye level. For a moment Snake was horrified he was going to receive a hug.

Instead, one of Otacon’s queasy smiles happened and a lot more glasses fiddling than was probably necessary.

“There’s this saying…” Otacon mumbled. “Heroism is holding on for one extra minute. Or something.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Snake said gruffly.

It was a saving grace that Commander Miller entered Otacon’s office then, or rather it would have been if it wasn’t an emergency.

“Both of you come with me,” he ordered, and Snake and Otacon’s petty awkwardness dissipated in the face of whatever seriousness was suddenly happening.

They were led to mission control, where a map of Western Nevada was flashing across large screens throughout the room. A big red dot was hovering ominously near the border with California. That was dangerously close to the position of this very base.

“We are in the midst of a top tier emergency,” Miller announced to the room at large. “After a month of inactivity, we’ve got another Bogey and it’s a big one. Bigger than the Fukushima monster, bigger than any of the others, even bigger than the one that landed in Russia. We are talking a big fucking problem, people, and it’s heading right for Area 27.”

He tapped the screen and it zoomed in on a military facility a disturbingly short distance from the big red dot.

“Area 27 is currently the biggest 009 manufacturer in the U.S. If we lose this, America’s resources are effectively shot and we’ll be sitting ducks. _People_ , I am saying we’re fucked. So what are we gonna do about it?”

He turned to Snake, sunglasses impenetrable. “It seems to me we’ve only got one option.”

Snake nodded, shoulders set. “Affirmative, Commander.” He knew he looked every bit the perfect soldier

Otacon had gone very pale at his side. “Sir… Commander. I really don’t think Snake is ready to pilot 010 on that sort of a mission!”

“Did I imply we had a choice?” Miller demanded.

Otacon made a strangled noise. “But I can’t possibly--!”

“Your mech will be fine,” Snake snapped, shooting him a glare that came from... where exactly? Otacon was interfering with the mission that had to be done.

Otacon wilted. Out of the corner of his eye, Snake noticed Miller’s self-satisfied sneer as plans commenced.

Snake’s time had come early.

x

Otacon’s Codec channel was turned on but blessedly silent as Snake jet his way to the Nevada border, a subtle rumbling sounding beneath the boom of Tetsujin’s thrusters. Miller debriefed him, described the Bogey in clinical terms that didn’t quite prepare Snake for meeting his first alien, but did its best.

The brown dusty shrubs of Southern California had given way to pure desert underneath him, a dirty orange sort of color stretching to the horizon.

“We’ll use the boom cannons as a last resort,” Miller was saying. “Considering your… _problem_. Just do what I tell you.”

Snake grunted an affirmative and there was a small crackling sigh, presumably from Otacon.

Tetsujin passed over the gray roofs and fenced-in campus of Area 27, and then there it was. A monstrous, unbelievable creature was waiting for him on the cracked earth.

It was the length of a football stadium and a half, a long black body of segmented armor atop dozens of bent legs. Its movements could have been described as scuttling except each of those many steps carried it rapidly by the yard. Snake’s brain immediately thought: scorpion. Its length was increased by a whip-like tail and at the front were a pair of truck-sized claws that Snake wasn’t looking forward to getting intimate with at all.

It let out a horrible sound, some sort of exploding screech at Tetsujin’s approach, and the mech came to earth with resounding footsteps, squaring off.

The Bogey was bigger than Tetsujin, way bigger. Its organic armor gave off an oily sheen.

“Go!” was Miller’s first order.

Snake obeyed, the thrusters taking him half flying, half running into the creature head on. It shrieked and ducked its great head to whip its tail at him with alarming speed.

Snake’s instinct was to catch it, try to break it, but Miller said “Jump!” so Snake did that instead. He was an extension of Miller, a military puppet. Tetsujin leapt over the swinging tail and came down on the beast’s head with metal feet.

Again, he thought to kick it into submission, but Miller barked out a much more intricate plan, using terms as if he were playing a game of chess.

“Rear guard! Turn! Flank from the left!”

Snake lost himself in the motions, and perhaps that was part of why he wasn’t worried. They were evenly matched, but Snake didn’t fear for his life because he wasn’t alive. He was a piece on the board.

At least at first. 

They grappled fiercely to Miller’s instructions, but something was wrong. The alien was getting smarter. Miller told Snake to duck under a blow and for some reason Snake found himself thinking “No!” as he obeyed, and found out why shortly after. The scorpion used his motion to bowl Tetsujin over onto his back and clamp down immediately with a massive claw. Snake lifted his right arm reflexively only for it to be pinned down brutally. The second claw clamped onto Tetsujin’s head.

Alerts started screaming from every direction in the cockpit, bringing Snake back to mortality real fast. The claw was crushing him slowly. It wouldn’t be long now before the cockpit collapsed in on Snake. His heart was hammering. He couldn’t breathe. The very thought of the claustrophobia inexorably closing in on him, the surrounding panels pressing the life out of him… Strapped in, trapped…

Miller was shouting in his ear, angry, cursing Snake’s imminent defeat.

“You’re dead, are you happy? Get out of there or you’re dead!” He had no instructions beyond that, just desperate barbs.

Snake couldn’t will his arms to move, all he could see was a rapidly growing crack in the corner of Tetsujin’s visor under the pressure of the Bogey’s claw, the walls around Snake groaning and scraping. He was going to die like this.

_Smoke in the 008. Darkness. Gray Fox…_

“Snake, wake up!” Otacon ordered. Snake snapped back to reality at this unexpected voice. “You’ve still got use of your legs. The Bogey’s midsection is carrying all the weight right now. _Hurry up_.”

It wasn’t a complete order, and Snake realized that Otacon was telling him to do this himself. He was telling Snake to use his instincts, to do what Snake would do rather than to follow a pre-prepared pattern.

Snake kneed the motherfucker in its nasty armored stomach, crunch!, and it emitted a grating screech as it reared back, unlatching from Tetsujin’s head.

“Now’s your chance!” barked Otacon. “You know this, Snake!”

Snake turned the thrusters on full, sliding out from under the Bogey rapidly as well as singeing its exoskeleton and grinding Tetsujin’s back screechingly across the desert earth. Tetsujin jerked back upright and he was on his feet again in a cloud of dust. Snake found himself putting the mech into a battle stance, like the close quarters combat Snake was used to on foot.

It was Otacon shouting out his instructions over Miller now, coaching Snake, rehashing lessons.

“Evasive maneuver, Snake!” he shouted as the scorpion pounced. His instructions were sharp, his reedy voice uncharacteristically powerful, and Snake found himself following him with an automatic trust. 

Punch! Parry!

They were like opposite parts of the same brain. When Snake made a decision, Otacon was quick to fire out the next move to compliment it. Snake wasn’t just obeying orders blindly now. He was working on a team with this useless man who gave merit to Snake’s individual abilities.

Otacon believed Snake could win this, easily and firmly.

The Bogey swung a massive black claw, and all Otacon said was “Now!” and Snake knew what he meant. He raised one of Tetsujin’s arms to snag between the pincers and with his other hand grabbed further down the Bogey’s segmented arm and _heaved_. Tetsujin lifted the monster up by its trapped claw, the Bogey’s many enormous legs frantically clicking and grappling under its body. 

A beeping structural warning was flashing in Snake’s face, but he ignored it, gritting his teeth, and swung the giant scorpion creature like a discus. The claw in Tetsujin’s hand ripped clean off as the scorpion went hurtling into the sands.

Cheers from the Codec, but not from Otacon. He was all focus.

“Snake, it’s not over!”

It wasn’t.

The hulking monster scrambled back to its many feet, and Snake watched with a stolid face as it swung its remaining claw with even more strength than before, the black crust shimmering in the hot sun. The longer this fight went on the harder it would be.

Snake knew exactly what he had to do. He had to use the boom cannons. The very idea made sweat drip cold down his back. He couldn’t control himself if he had another panic attack. His brain worked on its own, it was the one thing Snake had no say in.

“Shit,” Snake hissed.

“You can do this!” Otacon snapped back. “Heroism’s just one extra minute!”

It felt like Otacon’s will was right behind Snake’s own, bolstering it where it wavered. It pressed Snake forward. Pressed his arms on the levers, pushed, pounded a button, the boom cannons in both of Tetsujin’s hands glowed fiercely. The cockpit shuddered. The Bogey turned to stare Snake down with beady, reflective eyes. Snake was shaking, but Otacon’s resolve was there with him, the intense belief of a useless person at the end of the world who was putting everything he had into holding Snake up.

“Snake!” shouted Otacon, and Snake believed in him too and fired.

_He never saw Frank’s body, just a mess of blood and gore, like they were all just bugs in this incomprehensibly antagonistic world. Small and scared, ready to be crushed._

Otacon was whooping in his ear, and Snake heard that more than the noise of the cannons as Tetsujin’s visor went blindingly blue-white. Otacon was triumphant, not from victory but from hope. Hope was its own triumph.

The beams cut clean through the Bogey’s body, cracking, chunks of enormous exoskeleton flying in every direction. It fell. When Snake shakily cut the cannons and lowered Tetsujin’s hands, the alien monster was sprawled dead on the ground, immobile legs hanging in the air.

So many voices on the Codec were screaming in ecstatic excitement. Miller was shouting something. But Snake’s ears zeroed in on Otacon.

“Oh my god,” Otacon kept repeating. “Oh my god. Oh my god, Snake.”

Snake fell back into his chair with a long, rough exhale.

Was Otacon crying? The relief in his voice was apparent.

The poor guy had never been worried about his precious mech, huh? He was worried about this messed up pilot he barely knew.

“Oh my god, Snake, you kicked _ass_.”

x

What came next was debriefs and paperwork. Snake was dragged to the medical ward to get another injection from Dr. Hunter after a brief examination. Miller talked his ear off about what this meant for Earth’s stand against future aliens. Everybody was dazedly happy, breathing freely for the first time since Fukushima. Finally, they had a way to fight back and win.

It was getting late by the time Snake was at last dismissed to make his tired way back to his little room in the barracks. He wanted a shower. He wanted to sleep.

Instead he found Otacon hovering in front of his door.

He wasn’t wearing his usual lab coat, and he looked terribly tired as well, but nodded as Snake approached, cleaning off his glasses on his sweater and then slipping them back on his face with black sweater fuzz stuck on the rims.

“Welcome home,” Otacon said. 

Home, huh? Otacon said it entirely without irony, and Snake could almost believe in the sentiment without bitterness, so long as Otacon believed in it. Otacon kind of had that effect on things.

“Thanks.” Snake really meant it.

“Heh. That sounds nice,” said Otacon, pushing up the bridge of his glasses to hide his face.

“How’s Tetsujin?”

“Resting.” Otacon’s hand lowered to reveal a smile. “He’ll be just fine, don’t you worry.”

Snake snorted.

They were in a weird limbo where neither knew what to say, but also they weren’t entirely uncomfortable with not saying anything at all.

“You know what?” said Otacon. “I think they have cake in the canteen today. For somebody’s birthday, but it’s like they knew this would happen, isn’t it? Save the world cake?”

“Are you inviting me to dinner.”

“Well, it’s not much, but we are raising a mech together.”

“When you put it like that…”

Snake bumped his shoulder in a friendly way and Otacon accidentally stumbled forward a few paces, which made both of them laugh.

For the first time in a long time, Snake felt sort of human. A mortal, small thing, but that wasn’t all bad with Otacon chattering at his side down the hall.

They didn’t even eat much. They just kept each other’s company.

x

end chapter one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Tetsujin = The giant mech Otacon invented. Its model number is actually 010 but of course Otacon calls it by a weeb nickname. Tetsujin means “Iron Man” and was the name of the robot in the late 1950s manga Tetsujin 28-go, which inspired the tv show Gigantor.
> 
> Otacon = This isn’t Otacon’s official codename. He has none. He just thought it sounded cool.
> 
> FOXHOUND = Snake’s previous mech unit in a more human-based war setting. What the hell happened there, Snake?
> 
> Exposition = Gee, there sure was a lot!! (Sorry.)


	2. Super Soldiers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the warm welcome, dear readers! To be honest, I was super nervous after posting that first chapter, convinced it would be too out there and probably dumb (somewhere Kojima laughs and throws some buff old guys into a homoerotic montage), but then ya’ll left such lovely comments and really helped boost my smol spirits. This second chapter came around at a right clip thanks to your awesomeness~

It had been over three months since Tetsujin’s grand entrance onto the battlefield, and the monsters were getting bigger.

So were the humans.

“Target in sight,” Snake barked, as he piloted a reinforced but still blue Tetsujin, thrusters roaring, over a remote mountain base in Colorado. On the other side of the mountain was Snake’s target, and ‘in sight’ was an understatement. Almost like a new mountain in itself protruding from the slopes, there slouched a particularly behemoth alien, very different than the scorpion-like Bogey that had helped whet Snake’s teeth or any he’d fought since. Every ugly looked different than the last.

This one was more anemone than arachnid, a giant blob of thick green muscle with countless yellow arms writhing above its head, long enough to reach incredible altitudes and come hurtling down to earth like clenched fists, rumbling the cliffs into rockslides.

“Hey, I like this one!” said Meryl over the Codec.

Snake glanced to his right, where a huge red mech was pulling up to Tetsujin’s side. This was Aznable, Otacon’s first model 011. He was bulkier than Tetsujin, packed a much meaner punch, but also slower which wasn’t to Snake’s taste. He had a dual pilot system too which suited Snake’s tastes even less, but Meryl and Mei Ling made an incredible team.

“What will you name this beastie, Meryl?” came Mei Ling’s voice from the same channel, light and cheerful.

“How about Big Boy,” said Meryl.

Behind Tetsujin and Aznable was a long V of other mechs, mostly the smaller 009s but also a few 010s in different colors, exact replicas of Tetsujin but missing the signature blue (one of Otacon’s finer personal touches).

“Speaking of names…” said Mei Ling, as the squadron of mechs began to form a semi-circle in the air around the alien, dodging Big Boy’s flailing tentacles. “Otacon! Why Aznable? Can’t we rename 011 ‘Wukong’?”

Otacon’s voice crackled onto the Codec, sounding like he was talking around a sip of coffee. “Is now the right time for that?”

“Why not, he rides on the clouds,” said Mei Ling.

“Ugh. Really?”

“You’re just a Japanophile. ‘Goku’, then!”

Meryl joined in purely to help goad Otacon. “While we’re at it, why can’t it be a girl robot?”

“He’s not a robot, he’s a mech!” Otacon cried, their tactics clearly working. “And he’s Aznable! Snake, please talk some sense into them.”

“He’s fussy about his robots,” said Snake.

Otacon made a staticy despondent noise.

As all the mechs fell into relative position, allowing for the requisite dodges, Snake gave the order and every mechanical hand rose, boom cannons of various colors glowing in their palms.

This part still was never easy for Snake, even as the leader of the pack. His brain didn’t just stop being messed up. His pulse always quickened as the cockpit shook, his stomach always dropped into his boots. It was purely the repetition of training that made it easier, turned it simply into a shitty thing he had to do routinely.

“Alright Snake,” said Otacon, because he always said Snake’s name about now, with no particular inflection but Snake knew exactly what he meant. _I’m here, Snake._

“Fire!” Snake called, and in unison the mechs all shot blinding bright holes into Big Boy’s greenish mass.

A nasty jelly-like substance went exploding from every pore, splattering Tetsujin’s visor in no small amount, and Meryl whooped boyishly. Big Boy was effectively dead. And everywhere. The cleanup that came next was painstaking and annoying, a process of smelly cremation that billowed smoke into the sky, but the ladies in Aznable approached the business with a sort of youthful comradery and fangless humor that Snake could never quite match these days. They reminded him of a long-dead version of himself, and it made him uneasy sometimes. The Codec was a mess of aimless chatter among the ranks, channels popping in and out, and Snake just listened calmly for the most part.

“Another job well done,” said Otacon, and Snake could picture his friend’s small smile. “Time to come home, folks.”

x

With the Colorado base effectively protected from the morning’s alien attack, Snake’s team returned to the familiarity of California, where the smallish compound of Tetsujin’s birth had grown considerably in terms of resources and personnel in the past few months. They had skyrocketed to the forefront of humanity’s increasing victories, churning out 010 plans for the rest of the world. Civilian casualties were remarkably minimal these days. It seemed the aliens always landed near military bases now, as if strangely drawn to them, and Snake’s team had most of North America covered on that front. The watchful eye of Commander Miller got them to where they needed to be well before the worst of the damages.

It was organized chaos when Snake’s team returned to the hangar, the mechs all docking in their neat rows. Techs in lab coats scurried around like mice, Otacon’s ever growing army of assistants tending to the mechs and moving the pilots along like directing traffic. In the hubbub it was hard to stop and chat with anybody, but Snake did spot Otacon on a separate catwalk across the room. Otacon spotted him too and gave a mock salute.

As Snake exited into a more breathable yet still bustling corridor, somebody behind him shouted “Wait up!”

He paused and Meryl appeared at his elbow.

She was tall and muscular with a penchant for all her canvas jackets somehow looking worn to bits at all times. She and Mei Ling had started a fashion of sewing on badges, like they were some sort of biker girl scouts rather than soldiers. Her red hair was mussed from the long flight, and her grin was tight in her jaw.

“Good one huh?” she said, and held up a gloved fist for him to press his knuckles to. Then she turned her wrist to reveal the face of her watch. “I know where you’re headed, Mr. 1300.”

Their schedules overlapped at 1:00pm on Tuesdays, and it was currently Tuesday at 12:45. Snake’s gait settled to Meryl’s easier pace and they walked together down the halls.

“Aznable’s movements are getting steadier all the time,” Snake said.

“Yeah well Mei Ling and I might be new blood but we’re not pushovers.” This seemed to be Meryl’s typical attitude. She was younger than Snake, fresher, hadn’t quite seen all the monstrosities war had to offer yet.

That was the discomfiting part. Her spirit couldn’t be bottled up and suspended in time. Snake couldn’t help but expect her inevitable fall, like waiting for a blow.

Maybe he was just bitter.

“Old man,” Meryl said.

“I’m 30,” said Snake, rounding up.

“Yeah but when you scowl like that you look way older.” Her eyes were the sort that had premature crow’s feet, an imbedded sort of mischief. “I thought you were paying me compliments.”

“You’re just so wonderful, Silverburgh.”

“Thank you.”

They arrived at their destination, the medical wing where they were scheduled to get their weekly injections. It was entirely casual. Otacon wasn’t the only one with assistants now; Dr. Hunter rarely showed her actual face around the clinic anymore, but her doctors administered the shots with sterile good humor to the groups of pilots. Tuesday was Group A, etc.

“Used to hate needles,” Meryl said on their way out. “Needles and storms. Scared me shitless as a kid. It’s funny, nowadays I’m not sure I’m scared of anything.”

It was recommended to eat after their shots, so they went to catch the tail-end of lunch.

Mei Ling and Otacon were sitting across from each other at a small table in the canteen when they arrived. Mei Ling was more petite than Meryl, with a bob of black hair at her neck, and she was also more reserved, but often with a certain twinkle in her eye that explained why she and her copilot got along so well.

“It’s a matter of morphology,” Otacon was saying, as Snake automatically sat next to him out of habit. Meryl took the spot by Mei Ling. “I’m sure there’s plenty of reasons the aliens all look so different.”

“It’s a big universe to be sure,” said Mei Ling. “But even biology doesn’t have that many coincidences, does it? So many separate species all coming to Earth at once? Besides, you’re an engineer not a biologist.”

“I _am_ an engineer,” said Otacon, a little proudly and a little ridiculously. Man, he was looking rumpled. Probably running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to manage his sudden position as a person in charge of things. He’d left a pen behind his ear for who knew how long, and Snake wordlessly plucked it out of the mess of his hair and put it on the table by Otacon’s arm. “But look, I’m sure—ah, thanks Snake—I’m sure we’re figuring out plenty by studying them.”

“We _aren’t_ studying them though,” said Mei Ling. “We burn the corpses.” This fact hung in the air a moment before she smiled. “I’m just messing with you, Otacon. Classified is classified and orders are orders. I’m sure bigger people than us know what’s going on.”

Otacon looked vaguely miffed that he had been defeated, but let it go.

They all absently talked and ate their bland meals. Otacon’s lunch consisted entirely of a cup of coffee before Snake reminded him to get a damn sandwich. As their little meeting wound down, Mei Ling excused herself to go find Dr. Hunter.

“You know Naomi? Like a friend?” Meryl asked skeptically.

“She’s not all frost,” Mei Ling said, tilting her head. “Or maybe she’s frost but I like her. We do crosswords.” She squeezed Meryl’s arm before leaving.

As if like clockwork, Meryl got bored of the guys and left soon as well, and by then it was about time for Snake and Otacon to get their asses back to work. Being Miller’s golden duo was expectedly busy.

Otacon bumped Snake’s shoulder accidentally as they were sorting their landfill vs recycling and putting up their trays. Otacon’s simple presence at his side had become a staple of being here, even in utterly unimportant moments like this. Snake found himself noticing that familiarity acutely whenever he returned from a mission, almost like it was a surprise that Otacon was always still the same.

Half of Otacon’s sandwich wound up in the trash, barely nibbled, and Snake gave him a pointed look.

“Oh like you’re one to talk,” Otacon mumbled. Snake bumped his shoulder back deliberately before they went their separate ways.

x

The next day was a date that made Snake grimace. He didn’t need a calendar to keep track of time, his internal clock ticking off months in addition to minutes, and all morning it felt like the date was flashing in neon inside his brain, from the moment he woke up overly early and throughout his training regimen.

He always hit the gym before anyone else. Then came drills in Tetsujin with one of Otacon’s jittery techs. Brief lunch. In the afternoon, he trained the new recruits.

“You aren’t just a pilot,” he said to the mass of green kids in his corner of the gym. He was standing on a raised, shock-resistant platform, a makeshift boxing ring. “You’re a fighter. If you can’t fight, you can’t win.”

The date was still in his mind, but he knew if he didn’t mention it there was no way these intimidated faces would know what he was really thinking about. He must’ve looked like Rambo. He was wearing a black, short-sleeved t shirt that was getting tighter in the chest these days, bulging especially as he stood with his arms crossed like this. He knew he was getting more muscular than he’d ever been before. Seemed to be a side effect of being here.

One by one the kids came up to fight him, and he creamed them easily but with lessons slipped between the bruises. Maybe. Mostly bruises, but going to bed with pains was a teacher in itself.

As the decimated class sprawled across the room in various stages of pain and breath-catching afterwards, a shock of red bobbed through the crowd.

Meryl came up onto the stage, to whoops and hollers from her newblood peers. She wasn’t in this training class. She just liked to show off, and everybody else liked the thrill of watching somebody who could actually match Snake’s blows.

“Time for a real fight,” Meryl announced, knowing full well that a show would be the perfect demonstration of skill to the learning audience. Also it would be fun. She crouched, her half-curled hands raised at the ready.

Snake cracked his neck and stood wide-legged and solid, waiting for her to come at him first.

She always came at him first.

“Hup!” She lunged with a punch to make him deflect with his arm and then raised a knee to get him at the opening. His other hand smacked it away with a palmy slap.

They sparred to unrestrained hoots from the crowd. Of course, everybody always rooted for Meryl, because what greater joy is there than to see your gruff teacher defeated? Her advance was relentless, punching and kicking her way forward, and surely it was impressive to behold for the audience. What they didn’t notice, however, was that Snake was calmly deflecting all of her blows and stepping back deliberately. When she got him up against the ropes she kneed straight for the groin (the males in the crowd cried out in fear) but Snake snuck an arm around her back and fluidly pulled through his line of motion to get around her. 

Now _she_ was to the ropes. She spun back to him, blew hair out of her face, and grinned.

He waited for her to come at him again.

She was like a truck this time, and he met her head on. His blows were becoming more aggressive as well, putting her on the defensive at last. This was the part of the fight when she always shone. Guts was her specialty.

As Snake’s punches came to full strength and her technical skills met their limit, she always pulled out that spirit of hers, a last ditch effort of sneaky scrabbling for dominance. Snake realized as he pushed her further that he was falling again into the role of mentor. Unconsciously maybe he wanted to teach her to _stay alive_ , don’t lose that brawn whatever it takes, and Meryl met his kicks with rough grunts and vigor. Sweat spiked her hair dark at the temples and her teeth gritted in a violent sort of grin. She didn’t seem to mind getting pigeonholed as his student. Teacher’s pet, maybe.

Snake saw himself, sparring with Gray Fox.

With a final “Haaauh!” she spun a kick brutally into his side, and even though he caught her ankle in both hands, his ribs still smarted.

At some point the audience had grown somewhat alarmed, had gone quiet with awe and intimidation, and now that quiet was broken by a single man clapping.

“Fantastic,” said Miller from the back of the room. The strange spell was broken and Snake dropped Meryl’s foot. She bent her knee and hopped back a step, the adrenaline of her grin softening into an almost sibling affection. She covered this emotion by wiping her sweaty face off on the hem of her tank.

“A word, Snake,” said Miller, as Meryl slipped out of the ring to many pats on the back from the crowd.

The commander’s smile was faker and a lot less charming.

x

Miller spoke to him in hushed tones, their boots clipping along the corridor as he ‘escorted’ Snake back to the barracks. It was weirdly intimate, despite the occasional lab coated tech walking by in the opposite direction. There were cameras everywhere of course, but those were Miller’s eyes anyway. It was like Snake was perfectly in Miller’s little petri dish.

“Teaching the new recruits…” Miller said. In profile, Snake could almost see the commander’s eyes behind the sunglasses, but not quite. “There’s something almost poetic about it. Guarding the future. Atoning for past sins, maybe?”

Snake’s eyes narrowed. “Commander?”

Miller’s sneer was omnipresent. “Snake, I’m sure you know why you were chosen as 010’s first test pilot,” he said. “Your experience is top-notch of course, but… What is most exemplary, I think, is your dedication to the cause of protecting this world.”

The ability to blindly follow orders, he meant. An ugly feeling boiled in Snake’s chest but it changed at Miller’s next words.

“I’m looking into the truth behind FOXHOUND’s demise,” the commander continued. “I’m hoping to help you find closure… We all need answers to that, of course, especially in these dangerous times, but I look forward to your absolution, Snake. Your record was officially cleared, but as humanity’s hero I think you deserve better than the whisperings of hostile old vets.”

“Answers, huh…” Snake repeated, intrigued but wary. It felt very much like this was a carrot Miller was dangling in front of Snake’s nose, something Snake was trading in his blind faith for.

As if to prove Snake’s suspicion, Miller patted his arm and said, “You’re my right hand man. We do these things for each other, yes? I scratch your back and you scratch mine.”

It took a lot not to pull away from Miller’s touch. “… Of course.”

“Remember FOXHOUND, Snake,” Miller said and it sounded more like _Remember what you are_.

Snake’s memory was sharp as a tack when it came to FOXHOUND, the sort of memory that made his bones ache at night.

He remembered the day his team marched their 008s into their final battle in Zanzibar Land, the exact way the sun heated up Snake’s cockpit through the visor. He remembered how confident they were, at the peak of spirit and new technology. He remembered Frank’s voice.

Instead they went up in flames. Somehow the enemy had known their exact position and came with enough artillery to combat even the 008s. Leaked secrets, to be sure. Snake was the only one that crawled his way out alive, and that meant _he_ was penned as the one who had betrayed them all. Broken and shaken, he remembered perfectly how he was tossed between the hands of career military men like Miller, looking so sharp in their medal-studded uniforms, their hands clean through Snake’s blame. Even when he was finally found innocent, he still took the brunt of the damage because it was easier that way, it looked better on paper. He was like an insect under the lens of their higher rank.

That’s why he hated this placating smile of Miller’s, this false respect that would drop at a hat as part of the job description. He fully believed that one day Miller would stab him in the back wearing that same smile, the moment he outlived his usefulness.

“Yes, Commander,” Snake said. He was forever the perfect soldier, useful exactly for his expendability.

x

Snake’s room in the barracks always seemed extra gray at the end of the day, sterile with its thin sheets and blank walls. The smell of his own old cigarette smoke was the only character in the place. He was antsy, looking down the barrel on another sleepless night with nothing to do but reread the same one Steinbeck he had. 

Nothing to do meant thinking too closely about what Miller had said to him. Those thoughts never ended well, they never _ended_ , just running in circles. He knew he was throwing himself in the garbage, sacrificing his soul. And for what? Miller would have him think he was doing it for answers about his past, but was that even worth it?

The answer was always yes, no matter how much Snake’s logic told him no. Snake always reverted to going deeper, like he was begging for the darkness.

A knocking came at his door just to tick him off further, and Snake glowered as he answered it, fully expecting Miller and his shit-eating sneer.

Instead there was Otacon with a box of beer and a squawk.

“What’s with the scary face?” Otacon demanded. In the past he would’ve run hiding from Snake’s ire, but now he just sounded offended. “On your birthday no less.”

Snake’s shoulders automatically lowered, anger passing and his expression softening with chagrin as Otacon elbowed his way into the room.

It was Snake’s birthday, actually. He was surprised Otacon knew. Snake knew of course, but he’d never been big on giving his birthday any real attention. It just made him feel stressed into having an overly good day, so really it felt better to just push it aside, ignore the date adamantly. No doubt Otacon didn’t work that way, though. He hefted the box of beer onto Snake’s cot with a grin.

“Contraband!” Otacon said proudly. “Don’t tell anybody, or I’ll get in trouble. I mean, there’s cameras but… Oh well, whatever. It’s not like they can punish their top mech pilot too much.” He pushed up his glasses. “I finally finished reading your file and I couldn’t help but notice that d.o.b. was today! Pretty lucky, huh?”

“It’s been four months and you only just now finished reading my file?”

“Look, you can talk or you can help me open this box.”

Snake closed the door behind them with a scoff.

Otacon made himself at home pretty easily sitting on Snake’s bed, scrabbling at the box’s tabs with his fingers. Snake sat on the other side of the beer right as Otacon freed the first can and handed it to him.

This was weird beer. There was a picture of a woodchuck on the label.

“Apple?” Snake read, frowning.

“It’s good, I promise!” 

“What happened to beer-flavored beer.”

“For a superhero you’re not very adventurous, Snake.”

Snake opened it with a fizzy click, spraying his bare forearm with bits of froth. He exaggerated sniffing at it as Otacon got his own beer out and tapped it against Snake’s.

“Cheers and all that stuff.”

Snake tried the beer and made a face, but Otacon gulped it pretty contentedly.

They went through their first cans almost quietly, falling into the long comfortable silences they had, interspersed with bits of conversation that would suddenly occur to Otacon. Snake made Otacon laugh at one point and spill his drink on the floor.

As Otacon was cleaning it up, he noticed the pinpoint bandaid from yesterday on Snake’s arm, peeking out from under his black sleeve.

“Got your flu shot again, huh?” Otacon asked, wadding paper towels on the floor at Snake’s knee.

Snake watched the top of Otacon’s brown head, noting the engineer didn’t have full clearance in this regard. He didn’t know what the injections were either. Ignorant was about the best a man could be around here.

“Yeah. Flu shots.”

Otacon finished up and hefted his handfuls of beer-smelling wet towels to the trashcan in the corner, patting down his sides afterwards.

“You know… I kinda worry sometimes,” he said slowly, his back still to Snake, all white lab coat. “Lotta mysteries around here for a civilian like me… I really hope you’re doing ok, Snake.”

He turned around again with a too-big smile.

They continued their benign little party, and around the third beer Snake realized how strong these drinks were because of how much they were affecting Otacon. Snake found himself paying close attention to Otacon’s face because of the growing flush there, noticing anew the features that Snake had come to know very well in the past months.

Otacon had a long face, with high cheekbones and a potential for handsomeness that was rather mitigated by his dopey grins and omnipresent stubble. His hair was brown and waving, turning particularly mousey above his ears, getting ready to go gray prematurely it seemed. His glasses were always sliding down the thin bridge of his nose—they were now—but this revealed his eyes, which were a very gray blue and sharply intelligent behind the meekness.

Snake rarely got drunk these days, certainly not on beers, but as the night started getting late, Otacon went deeply red-cheeked. He didn’t slosh or slur, but apparently drunk Otacon became extra adamant about everything in the world, gesturing broadly and repeating things a lot. Snake realized Otacon liked to hear himself talk. It wasn’t a surprise, really.

“I’m telling you, it might just be animation, but fiction, _science fiction_ , has predicted so much. It predicted a lot in our world! That’s why it’s _science_ fiction, because it’s like…. it’s like us dreaming about science, the possibilities, our questions. It’s the human side of science, you know? I used to not like humans much, but… well, I don’t want us to die off. Science would be very boring without us.”

“So these Japanese cartoons are all that?” Snake asked, highly amused.

“Yes! Tetsujin, Aznable, they’re all from that!” Otacon leaned into Snake’s shoulder and their faces were close, his breath partly apple and partly the sickly sweet of the alcohol all up in Snake’s nose. “Humans being human. I thought science was just numbers, but I guess it’s humans-being-human stuff in the end. We fight or we love, and science does too. Maybe I’m in over my head.”

Otacon’s smile went more serious, not in any negative way but pensively, as he watched Snake closely.

“So you really are only good at numbers,” said Snake.

“Yep.” Otacon smacked the p with gusto. “Snake,” he said. “What if I kissed you right now?”

Snake’s smile tilted wryly and he patted Otacon’s thigh. “You’re pretty drunk, how about not.”

Otacon seemed to ponder this then agreed with Snake’s logic. Abruptly he turned and laid back across the bed around the messed-up beer box, plopping his legs across Snake’s lap.

“You’re a real good guy, Snake, I mean it.” His voice rose up somewhat muffled.

“You’re not bad yourself.”

“I mean it!”

“Thanks.”

Snake finished his drink and put the empty can in the box with the other, now all empty, cans. Otacon snored a little.

Snake felt like laughing, but instead he patted Otacon’s knees. “Good birthday, Otacon. I’m doing fine.”

He just sat there for a long time, staring ahead at the wall with Otacon’s legs under his hand and the engineer’s deep breathing the only sound in the room. Snake could almost fall asleep like this too, sitting up. Otacon was overly warm in his lap and Snake’s own legs were getting pin-prickly and bloodless, but it was still somehow more peaceful than Snake had anticipated for tonight.

It must have been almost an hour before Otacon groggily rolled his way to semi-consciousness and began the bleary trek to his own quarters, with Snake watching him down the hall in amusement.

Snake was very fond of this person. As he clicked the door shut with finality for the night, it felt like being born might be an achievement after all, sometimes.

x

To Otacon’s credit, he did come to the unexpected debrief in mission control the next day, but he came looking more rumpled than usual and with a pair of bags under his eyes that screamed _headache_. Snake hid a wry smile behind his fist, and refocused on Miller.

“If you ask me, these aliens are losing their touch,” Miller was saying, to a murmur of cocky appreciation from the crowded pilots. Behind him on the screen was the typical big red dot beeping on a map of… nothing. “It’s in the middle of the damn Pacific. Appeared this afternoon, a big winged thing, and it’s just been flying over nothing for miles, getting itself turned around. Closest thing is the Midway Islands and even then it’s a good few miles away. Easy.”

It wouldn’t require their entire force, but it was standard procedure for Tetsujin and Aznable to pave the way, even in minor skirmishes. Throw in a couple more 010s and they had their smallish team.

It was a long flight, and Snake was planning in his head what blockish energy bar he’d be packing for dinner as they were dismissed to get ready for business. Otacon shuffled through the crowd to slap his back before they had to disappear to their separate duties.

“Last night was fun, Snake,” Otacon rasped in the way of people who can’t fully remember the fun in question. “Ha ha, I didn’t say anything weird did I?”

“Just the regular weird,” Snake fibbed. No use mortifying his hungover friend.

Otacon laughed with relief, believing him.

x

Maybe Otacon was right about Snake’s bland culinary tastes, but this was partly a habit from eating more for sustenance than for pleasure. His Calorie Mate sat in his stomach like a fortifying brick as the sunset burned orange-pink in Tetsujin’s visor, the sea expansive below and going red-crested in the evening light. Their V of mechs rumbled at an almost lazy pace, scattered updates from Miller confirming that their alien of the day was still not posing a threat to any human landmarks. With Meryl and Mei Ling’s channel popping onto the Codec purely to chat with Snake over ‘dinner’, it felt almost like a vacation.

Evening fell deeper, the red clouds going indigo, the sea going black and blue. Headlights on, automatic. The mechs glowed in fluorescent lines along the joints of their armor, Tetsujin becoming a blue beacon as the world’s light dimmed.

Without being able to say exactly when it began, it was night. Even with the clouds, the stars out here were incredible. In remote places like this they weren’t so much pinpoints in the sky as countless unfathomable spirals, loops and eddies like the churning sea underneath. It reminded Snake of Alaska, when even the cold in his hands couldn’t get him to leave his front porch and the quiet night.

“Alright there, Snake?” came Otacon’s voice on the Codec. He was checking in the way he did, a worrier. He didn’t have the same view as Snake, back at base on his computers, and for a cheesy moment Snake almost wanted to describe it for him.

Instead Snake said, “Yeah, I’m good.”

It seemed like everybody had gone strangely subdued. Sometimes Meryl and Mei Ling liked to close their channel and just talk amongst themselves, and Snake imagined them murmuring quietly in Aznable side by side, with those small private smiles they had for each other. The pilots in the two other 010s were keeping to themselves as well, leaving Snake to his peace.

Otacon ruined it by chattering, a private call, his channel only for Snake at the moment, but his staticy voice had become such a constant in Snake’s life that it was almost like a lullaby, the hum underlying a silence.

“You’re quiet. Not falling asleep are you?”

“No, Otacon. Sometimes quiet is just best.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Snake snorted. “I’m listening. Keep telling your stories.”

Otacon hummed. Then came a shuffling sound as if he was repositioning himself in his chair, perhaps resting his chin in his hand. How rumpled was he looking now? Did he have another pen behind his ear? A coffee at his elbow? The night was Otacon’s witching hour, even after a hangover, and he never slept when the pilots were away. Instead, he told Snake about whatever came to mind.

“Did I ever tell you why I made Tetsujin?”

“Anime. Saving the world.”

“Well, apart from that.”

“Tell me.”

“I might not look like it but I happen to come from a long line of military types. Scientists, I mean. It’s how I got this job, really. I was kind of, er, an intellectual punk for awhile. I’d get jobs on my own merit of course but then I’d kinda ruin it by hacking into things I wasn’t supposed to.”

“That’s a new side of you,” Snake said, teasing but also impressed.

“Yeah.” Otacon chuckled self-deprecatingly. “Falling back on my father’s legacy, that’s me.”

“Gone straight.”

“Relatively.”

The story wasn’t over, Snake could sense it, but the next parts took awhile to come out. Snake waited.

“My father… I guess you probably haven’t heard of him, but let’s just say he was big into nukes.”

“That kind of scientist.”

“Yup.”

There was deep regret there, and Snake found himself impressed again, this time that Otacon was capable of drunkenly rambling about science fiction with such bright-eyed wonder.

“I’m determined not to become a pawn,” Otacon said firmly. He didn’t mean this to implicate Snake at all, but Snake did notice the contrast between him and his friend with a bitter smile. “I designed Tetsujin as a way to… repent. This is good we’re doing. We’re saving the world, not destroying it. That’s always been my dream, I guess.”

“You’re a better man than me.”

“Huh? That’s not true.” The genuine shock in Otacon’s voice made Snake almost believe it.

Snake grunted.

“… Snake. I was a pretty shitty person for awhile. Too smart and too cowardly. My family kinda… well, nukes weren’t my father’s only legacy. I think mostly I just want to live a life I can be proud of.”

Snake thought of what he might have said to that scared, self-hating kid of the past he could hear in Otacon’s voice. But then he remembered how back then Dave hated himself too and was too deep in shit to be worth much of anything to someone else. They were similar like that. 

“You’ve been wearing your heart on your sleeve lately, Otacon,” he said softly. 

“Have I? Ha ha. Yikes.”

After a few quiet moments, Meryl and Mei Ling’s channel came in with a beep.

“Interrupting anything?” asked Meryl.

“My peace,” Snake said flatly, and she laughed.

“The Midway Islands are out there on the horizon,” she said. “Can you see them, Snake?”

He leaned slightly forward, as far as his harness would allow him, and squinted out into the starry darkness. There was indeed a small patch of black land in the far distance, probably invisible to eyes that weren’t military trained.

“You’re near your alien friend, now,” said Otacon, his channel now reaching the whole team. “Stay alert.”

“Let’s call this one Moby,” Meryl said. “Moby Dick.”

“You haven’t even seen it yet,” Mei Ling chastised.

“It’s the feel of the thing,” said Meryl. “Whoever spots Moby first gets to be Ahab.”

Despite the name, they all knew Moby would be in the air rather than the sea. A winged creature. Those were sometimes tricky, but the mechs didn’t fly for nothing.

As Snake scanned the clouds interrupting the stars, he caught the edge of a dark shape flitting past his vision.

“Got him,” he barked, turning Tetsujin toward it and breaking the V formation.

“Of course it would be you, Snake,” said Meryl. Aznable’s massive hands curled into fists.

Moby puffed through the clouds high above, a shadow over the stars of indistinct shape, smallish by alien standards but long, thin, and fast. At Snake’s order, he and the other two 010s raised their hands and fired a line of short blasts into the air, Moby dodging them in curling motions but also noticing its new challengers below. At an impressive speed, the alien began its descent towards them, clarifying into a long almost reptilian beast with tight-skinned, batlike wings.

“We got this,” said Meryl, and Aznable thrust forward to meet it.

“Cover them,” Snake commanded, and he and the other 010s hovered side by side with their palms raised at the ready.

Aznable charged with a punching, grappling brutality. Meryl and Mei Ling thrived on this kind of straightforwardness. Moby screeched, its long body curling under the heavy beats of its wings, planning to slip clean past Aznable’s arms but Aznable grabbed its tail with a glowing red fist, the mech’s other hand then hurtling over to grip Moby’s chest just as hard, enormous ribs cracking in the night beneath mechanized fingers. Moby shrieked and writhed, but Aznable’s grip was absolute, and Snake could picture Meryl’s grin as she and Mei Ling set the boom cannons. Light blasted Moby to smithereens in their hands.

It looked like Snake and the other 010s weren’t needed. An easy kill, as predicted. The charred pieces of Moby that still remained floated listlessly to the ocean below, lost amidst the waves. Water instead of fire this time, but the result was the same, the alien disappearing without a trace to the human world.

The Codec was filled with hearty cheers, the guys in the other 010s barking praises in response to frank bragging from Meryl and Mei Ling.

This ended with Otacon’s voice, abrupt and alarmed. “Snake! There’s something—“ but he was cut off.

All Codec lines suddenly went to full static as the air bristled with some sort of charge. The hairs on the backs of Snake’s arms stood up a split moment before a massive ball of sparking electricity came hurtling out of the darkness above and hit Aznable square in the chest.

Aznable went plummeting into the black ocean below, as if momentarily shutting down, engulfed in an enormous splash.

“Meryl!” Snake found himself shouting, but there was no time for regrouping. Four massive flying objects were hurtling down from the heavens, cloaked by darkness and surrounding the remaining 010s, Tetsujin included.

Four, Snake’s brain repeated. There were four giant attackers. They shot the balls of electricity from their torsos, and in the sparking light Snake got a glimpse of what they looked like.

Massive humanoid suits, their shoulders protruding into spikes that warped the humanity of their shape into something disturbing. Snake shouted at his comrades to get down as electricity came bowling bodily at them from every direction.

But all of this happened in only a moment, the Codec was gone, and no one was prepared. Snake dodged the blast aimed for him by unexpectedly zooming downward toward the ocean where Aznable bobbed motionlessly in the waves. The other two 010s weren’t so lucky. They were struck with the electric blasts and went limp, but instead of falling they were caught in the waiting arms of their attackers.

What happened next was brutal. The 010s were torn apart limb from limb, arms first and then legs and finally the heads sent flying into the far sea.

The Codec had come back, still blurry with the static of these strange energies in the air, but clear enough that Snake heard their screams.

“Snake!” Otacon’s voice flickered in and out. “What the hell’s happening? Those… Those are _mechs_!”

They were. Huge alien mechs unlike anything Snake had ever seen. They weren’t 009s, 010s, or even 011s. They were something stranger, something foreign and horribly deadly. They used the night’s darkness to their advantage, and their crackling electric manipulations turned the Codec channels to screeching confusion in Snake’s ears.

“--et out of there!” Commander Miller had appeared. “Get out of there! It’s a trap. They’re thinking they can lead our best fighters to the middle of nowhere and pick em off. Turn around Snake, we need your 010!”

The alien mechs all turned to face Snake from above, silent mysterious predators. They had no Codec channels of their own that Snake could detect. He was staring down an enemy of incomprehensible foreignness.

“—Snake—!“ Otacon.

Otacon wouldn’t be surprised by Snake’s next move. Snake put Tetsujin in a combat stance, hovering protectively over Aznable below. 

He wasn’t going anywhere without Meryl and Mei Ling.

The two pilots knew him well enough to sense that too and Mei Ling’s voice crackled desperately, “Snake, leave us!”

“Shut up,” Snake growled.

Electricity thrummed through the air. The Codec went to static once more. Snake was alone and ready.

His heart pounded with the claustrophobia of FOXHOUND, the memories of Zanzibar Land.

This time either he left with his comrades, or he died with them. 

x

end chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Aznable = Otacon’s second mech creation, model number 011, a dual pilot system run by Meryl and Mei Ling. Mei Ling wants to rename it “Wukong” after Sun Wukong the monkey king, a famous character from the legendary Chinese novel Journey to the West. His Japanese counterpart is Son Goku, hence Mei Ling’s barb at Otacon. The name Aznable is after Char Aznable from Gundam. Otacon is a nerd.
> 
> Otacon’s beer = This is a made-up brand but it’s based slightly on Woodchuck Hard Cider, one of my fav beverages, you should try it.


	3. Engineer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy this chapter was difficult, as I was terribly sick all week and also unable to sleep. Here’s hoping it’s in English lol Thank you so much for your comments and support! <33

The night was dark now, the Codec an undulating, shrieking buzz trying to get itself back on the right frequencies. Snake stared up at four metal monsters. As if like clockwork, the alien mechs at last sacrificed their stealth for light, their massive spiny bulks beginning to glow softly, a sort of phosphorescent green, like worms in deep dark places.

Snake raised Tetsujin’s arms, palms out in a wide arc, boom cannons humming and gaining power. He couldn’t hit all four opponents. Could he even hit one? 

These moments were ticking by too slowly. Something was going to happen. He had to be ready for it…

Below him Aznable was in the waves, headlights flickering in and out, red and black.

Then everything erupted into chaos.

Two of the enemy mechs started their descents on either side of Tetsujin, raring to trap him in a pincer motion, and at the same moment the other two shot twin balls of electricity from their chests right on top of him.

Snake abandoned the cannons and cut his thrusters entirely, falling as a hulking heap of dead weight, the balls of light following just above him, hurtling down on him right in his visor… He caught himself just before the water, spinning belly-down, grabbing for Aznable’s shoulders. Tetsujin’s fingers dug into the other mech, tearing through wheezing metal, and Snake dragged them up out of the sea as he pulled Tetsujin abruptly higher again, spinning, evasive maneuvers around the aliens’ trap with Aznable’s bulkier form held haphazardly to his chest.

The balls of electricity hit the water a split moment after, sending sparks like lightning dancing across the waves, stretching like jagged, jumping fingers under Tetsujin’s ascent.

The Codec erupted into scattered voices fighting for dominance over the static. Miller, angry. Mei Ling, desperate. Techs. Snake pulled Tetsujin whirling into another deft turn, his shoulders tense, ears honing in.

He needed Otacon.

“—ose clouds!” There he was. “Those clouds Sna—s raining closer to—dway Islands—the electricity—“

“Got it,” Snake barked, and with another turn he set his thrusters on full directly toward the bits of land on the far horizon.

In Tetsujin’s arms, Aznable’s red lights were growing stronger again.

“Mei Ling! Meryl!”

“We—here—“

“I need you to get your thrusters up immediately. We can’t make it just on the 010’s power. Repeat: Get your thrusters up _now_.”

The clouds were growing thicker, the stars disappearing, and despite the horrible silence Snake knew the alien mechs had to be right behind them, constantly encroaching. Another shock of sizzling electric light appeared out of the corner of his eye. Tetsujin was too slow like this, especially with Aznable just a dead weight in his arms…

A rumbling below signified that Aznable’s thrusters were cutting on and off, power still faltering.

Otacon’s voice was messy on the Codec trying to guide Aznable onward.

“Repeat: Get your thrusters up now!” Snake barked, as the static increased, the electricity pulling nearer, the light and energy alive in Snake’s cockpit. “Thrusters! Now!”

Bwoom! All at once Aznable came to life in full force, his added power hurtling them ahead. Tetsujin spun, still clinging Aznable to his chest, and two balls of electricity went shooting past their shoulders, a narrow miss. It was like some horrible travesty of a dance, Tetsujin and Aznable pressed too-close together, their combined thrusters tearing each other’s legs apart scrap by scrap, but at the same time forcing them onwards at an unprecedented speed.

The clouds ahead in Tetsujin’s spinning visor looked like they were falling, smearing across the landscape.

It was just like Otacon had said. It was raining over the Midway Islands.

Like hitting shelter, Tetsujin and Aznable bowled headlong into the rain, the pounding water engulfing them. The alien mechs followed, glowing wetly.

The barrage of electric attacks had suddenly ceased. Otacon’s dumb burst of intuition had paid off. The water was throwing off the aliens’ main offense.

Snake wasn’t about to stick around and see what else they could pull out.

“There’s still four of them and maybe one and a half of you,” Otacon said. “If you don’t get outta there fast, you’re dead meat, Snake.”

Tetsujin and Aznable’s brutal dance unlatched and performed one final turn, so that the two damaged mechs were hovering back to back, cannons revving. Four versus one and a half, the rain obscuring the world, turning everything into the smeared glow of mech headlights…

“Get out of there!” Otacon repeated.

“Easier said than done,” Snake snapped testily, as the green glow of the aliens surrounded them in the rain.

“011’s power is at 30% but climbing,” Mei Ling announced. “I’m not sure how well the cannons are gonna work until we’re at least at 50, Snake. We need more time.”

“Time’s what you don’t have,” said Otacon.

In unison the aliens shot forward, arms raised.

“Meryl!” Snake shouted. Why wasn’t she on the Codec? “Defense, now!”

Aznable and Tetsujin both dropped their cannons in favor of their fists as two opponents apiece hurtled into them.

This sort of fight was only a small amount skill. Most of it was desperate scrabbling, grit, _guts_ , and it just so happened that was Meryl’s specialty.

Snake had to trust the women at his back. No time to think or doubt. Just action. As Snake parried a blow from attacker number one, the other alien punched a spiked fist straight through Tetsujin’s chest, brutal and clawing. Alerts started flashing in the cockpit, but Snake used Tetsujin’s wound to his advantage, spinning his torso and sending the alien mech spiraling with its fist still trapped in Tetsujin’s torn metal. It gave him enough time to force a palm into the first mech’s head, crunching.

Otacon became a constant voice in Snake’s ear, unable to shout out commands fast enough but resorting to half-concepts, bursts of phrases that only Snake could really decipher when they were like this, working in such a tight timeframe that they were practically in-sync. Otacon was here. Whatever happened, Otacon was going to be here fighting with him until the very last moment.

Otacon, Meryl, Mei Ling… They were all going to give this every last piece of the skin on their knuckles.

With a great heaving motion, Tetsujin wrenched the alien arm out of his chest and flung the attacker off into the rain, falling back against Aznable behind.

“011 at 40%!” Mei Ling shouted. The shrill of alerts set a cacophonous background to her voice on the Codec. Aznable was taking a beating too.

“Time this!” Otacon. “Combine your thrusters again to get a shot from above!”

“What?” Mei Ling cried, harried, but Snake knew what Otacon was yammering about.

“We’re going up,” Snake said, and Tetsujin hooked elbows with Aznable, backs pressed together, and they both shot their thrusters on full again, erupting up into the downpour. The aliens followed, just a millisecond behind, and that millisecond was their key, their last ace in the hole.

“011 at 48%!” Mei Ling.

“On the count of three, fire the cannons,” Snake ordered.

Tetsujin and Aznable’s looped arms went straight, side by side, all four palms facing downward on their pursuers.

“One…”

“49%!”

“Two…”

“Three, do it now!” Otacon shouted, a moment too soon for the countdown but also the exact right moment for what they needed to do.

Tetsujin and Aznable both followed his order and fired their boom cannons, a great blast of intersecting light, tearing at their own feet but also plowing through the alien ranks.

In that split moment, Meryl’s voice came at last onto the Codec. She was screaming, the sort of scream that tears straight out of your chest and claws your throat.

“FUCK YOU!!” she wailed, fierce and avenging over the rain and the tremors and the blasting structural alerts. The alien attackers felt her fucking wrath.

With their last distraction in place, Tetsujin and Aznable went horizontal at full speed. They’d had a single second to divert the aliens’ attentions and escape, and they’d done it. They were gaining distance now, hurtling out of the clouds, out of the rain, the hell out of Dodge.

“Keep that pace up,” Otacon said. “You’re losing them.”

Against all odds, they were.

There was no time to rejoice. They had to focus on running, on speeding farther and farther away from their near-death.

Snake’s hands shook slightly on the controls, the adrenaline staggering into a feeling of empty queasiness, like too much caffeine.

He tried not to listen to Meryl’s deep rasping breaths on the Codec, her shrill swears, and Mei Ling’s quiet attempts at comfort, a constant drone of proverbs.

Something was wrong. They were all messed up and beaten around at the moment, but Meryl in particular.

Snake hadn’t been able to prevent it.

“Fuck,” Snake muttered, his heart in his throat.

“Snake,” said Otacon. “You’re alive.”

Snake barked an ugly laugh. “Well, when you put it like that…” he rasped.

They were alive. As the minutes passed and they were jetting farther from the aliens, farther from any sign of pursuit, it felt like that life grew stronger.

They were a right fucked up mess but they were alive, and when you put it like that, it felt almost like a job well done.

x

Getting back to base was a desperate limping scramble. Tetsujin and Aznable were too damaged to make the full trip on their own, but managed to get halfway there before a squadron of other 010s met them and heaved them the rest of the way. Getting into the hangar was a hassle; they couldn’t dock normally, and had to rely on the mechs’ emergency escapes and rope ladders to exit the old fashioned way.

Otacon was waiting for him when Snake finally alighted on the catwalk. In his lab coat, clearly at the forefront of the techs hurrying to tend to Tetsujin and Aznable’s wounds, but the look on his face said he was far more interested in Snake at the moment. He was white as a sheet.

It was clear he didn’t know what to say, his lips thin in a determined line and his glasses askew. Snake gripped his shoulder, jostling it somewhat to snap Otacon out of his stupor.

“Good work,” Snake told him firmly, positioning himself so their eyes were level.

He didn’t expect Otacon to step forward into an awkward hug. His arms wrapped around Snake quickly, tightly, and for a split moment his hair was up against Snake’s face, brushing his cheek. Snake didn’t have much chance to respond before just as abruptly Otacon had pulled away, Snake’s hand still hanging awkwardly in the vicinity of his shoulder.

“Yeah, same to you,” Otacon said. “You done real good, Snake.”

He glanced down the catwalk to Aznable and Snake followed his gaze, to where Mei Ling and Meryl were being questioned by a couple of Hunter’s doctors. Sure enough, another doctor was on his way to Snake, and Snake firmly ignored him.

He patted Otacon’s back one more time, then pressed his way clean past the doctor to where Meryl and Mei Ling were standing.

Mei Ling smiled at him wobblingly. Her hair was a mess and her face was blotchy red with exertion, but she was alright. Meryl...

Meryl turned away from him before he could get a good look at her face.

“Are you alright?” he asked them, once their doctors had stopped talking.

“We’re fine,” said Mei Ling. Meryl didn’t say anything. “…Thank you, Snake.”

Snake nodded, eyes boring into Meryl. He didn’t care if she felt his gaze, if it discomfited her—he needed to get a good look at her, to suss out what was wrong. Fortunately, it didn’t take that much genius on Snake’s part. Her shoulders were hunched, her fists and jaw clenched, a swimming in her eyes that so avidly avoided him.

Shame. 

They had almost gotten killed and she was ashamed. It wasn’t easy to have someone risk their life for you, even a messed up specimen of a life like Snake’s.

Mei Ling curled an arm around the small of Meryl’s back, their badge-studded canvas jackets matching, and her smile at Snake became almost apologetic. He glanced away. It wasn’t his business whether Meryl resented him or not. Right now all that mattered was that she was physically ok. Mentally: getting there.

A storm was coming down the catwalk suddenly.

Commander Miller was furious, and Otacon was scuttling in front of him, also getting uncharacteristically furious, trying to ask questions or perhaps act as a meat shield for Snake’s impending lecture, but he was easily brushed off and then Miller came to stand in front of Snake, overly close, his blond hair pulled tight at his temples.

“What the hell was that?” Miller demanded, and Snake could see the black outlines of his eyes through the sunglasses.

Snake didn’t say anything.

“I gave you a direct order to get your ass out of there,” Miller filled in, enunciating boilingly. He got weirdly posh when he was this angry. “What. The hell. Was that.”

“I didn’t hear the order,” Snake lied slowly, and oh, Miller liked that even less. “The Codec was obscured.”

A muscle in Miller’s jaw jumped beside his clenched teeth. It wasn’t like Miller could prove Snake’s negligence, but they both knew perfectly well what had really happened. This was the first time Snake was looking Miller square in the face and lying to him, a chink in his super soldier persona that fell like a pin to the floor. The defiance in his chest had a dull edge of anger. If he’d listened to Miller, Meryl and Mei Ling would be dead, and probably even Snake too.

Otacon cleared his throat. “At least now we have both Snake’s 010 and the 011,” he said. “I’d say this is a happier ending than any of us could have anticipated…”

Miller’s lip curled, not into his usual smile but into a grimace. The disgust was mutual.

“Get to the medical wing,” he ordered, and turned on his heel to storm back from whence he came, nearly plowing over Otacon as he passed.

The doctors took it from there, ushering the three pilots onward. They would get their shots. They would get their sparse dinners.

Snake doubted any of them would get much sleep.

x

The next day as expected Meryl wasn’t haunting Snake’s elbow, with her boasts and her offerings of fist bumps. He went to find her instead.

She was in the canteen, sitting alone without a tray. It was almost strange to see her all in one piece, looking like her regular self in terms of shocking red hair and canvas jacket, but at the same time so very… fragmented. Sometimes the most insidious injuries were the ones you couldn’t see.

She glanced up at him through her bangs, a look that clearly was telling him to go away, but he ignored it and sat across from her. She glanced away from him almost petulantly, if not for the sadness etched over the childishness of her expression.

“Where’s Mei Ling?” he asked.

“Who knows,” she said bitterly. “Crosswords with Naomi, I guess.”

“She hasn’t been taking care of you,” Snake pressed, not exactly a question because he already knew the answer.

Her bitterness faltered and got replaced by the real emotion. That shame again.

“She’s been great,” Meryl said softly. “I’m just fucked up.”

Snake made a gruff noise, something like understanding.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to order her to talk to him. Maybe he was being selfish, thinking his presence could be anything near helpful. Maybe he just wanted to be near her, for her not to be alone at the moment. 

She sighed.

“Those guys in the other 010s were Amal and Max,” she said. “The guys that died.”

Snake realized he hadn’t known their first names.

The fierce bravado of her expressions, the sharp grins, were gone and her eyes were big with compassion. Snake thought this might be the real Meryl he was meeting here for the first time.

“I thought we were invincible,” she said, her voice rough.

“… It’s easy to think.”

She pressed her forehead into her hands. “In the end I’m just a rookie, huh? Your little student.”

Snake didn’t know what to say that wasn’t a lie so he didn’t say anything.

“Sorry for dragging you down, Snake.”

“Meryl…”

Abruptly she got up to leave, but he grabbed her elbow firmly. She turned her face away.

“Sometimes it’s bigger of a person not be used to these things,” he said thickly, not entirely sure what he was trying to get across except for this intense respect he felt for her.

She shrugged him off and left.

x

Snake preferred to keep his mental distance from people at times like this. He tried not to think about them much, those beings beyond himself, but now he was thinking constantly about Meryl, outside of the immediacy of their actual interaction, just Meryl Meryl Meryl all day and even intruding into a last-ditch, stop-thinking evening workout. He was fucking worried and it irritated him. It made him remember somebody else who had snuck through the cracks once into his brain and never let go.

It made him remember Frank.

Back then Snake had been the rookie, with a fresh codename like the wet sheen of a new coat of skin. Gray Fox taught him everything he knew, taught him how to channel the senselessness of his life into his fists and kick the shit out of everything else. That’s what they had in common. Fighting was the only thing they were both good at.

Looking back now, Snake understood how much Fox’s mentorship must have felt like his current relationship with Meryl. The chosen pupil who weaseled into your psyche. Teaching them to win, protecting them through that.

Snake understood Meryl’s frustration too, because sometimes he wondered if that’s all he ever meant to Fox.

He remembered one particular moment from back then very well, sharper than the rest, although he didn’t know why because it was only a moment among many…

They were out in the mountains, their 008s all circled together under nets of haphazard camouflage, and everybody was switching off playing whoever’s favorite version of poker, cards with naked women on them with cigarettes for betting chips, all except for Gray Fox who drifted off quietly into the waning tree line. Snake followed him.

That’s when the moment happened. Fox sitting under pines, his hair blunt and silver, dark from too few showers. He just sat there, watching nothing in particular. Taking in the forest. This was also something Snake and Fox shared. They liked their quiet, and they appreciated how nature seemed to be the only one willing to give it to them.

Snake stood a few paces behind him, unsure of whether to disturb this scene or not, until Fox turned to him with a thin smile.

“Solid Snake,” Gray Fox had said, almost pensively. “Let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Would you kill me?”

For a numbing second Snake thought it was a request. Then he realized it was a hypothetical.

Snake found himself very much wanting to answer correctly, as if trying to pass a test, but the only answer he could really give was the honest one. “Only if it was a mercy for you,” he said.

“A mercy…” Gray Fox’s smile went distant but more real. It wasn’t a smile for Snake, just for himself. Did that mean Snake’s answer was good enough?

Snake never knew, really. Fox turned again to the trees, silent, and for a long time Snake stood watching the lean planes of his back. It was like Snake wasn’t there, like Fox was alone in a world that didn’t include anybody else.

For awhile at that point Snake had thought of Gray Fox as his best friend, and perhaps in that moment, with that question and the pines, Snake finally realized he would never fully be close to him. Fox was like standing in water yet being unable to clasp it in your hands.

Back then, that was all Dave felt he could hope for in a companion.

x

Snake left the gym late, stinking of sweat and accompanied by the omnipresent whirs of the hall cameras turning to watch him idly as he walked by. His footsteps thumped primly, the repetition almost mesmerizing in the quiet of the evening corridors, to the point that it took him awhile to realize he wasn’t walking toward the barracks.

Unconsciously, he was on his way to Otacon’s office.

He didn’t question it, just went the rest of the way to the little room off the side of the hangar, and sure enough the door was open, a square of fuzzy yellow light falling across the darkened hall. Trust Otacon to be burning the candle at both ends at a time like this, scrambling for an answer.

Snake pulled himself into the doorway with a hand on the jamb, vaguely surprised to find Otacon’s desk was empty after all despite the light. No Otacon in sight. Was Snake disappointed? In that split moment his eyes took in all the necessary details of the room, a habit of paranoia perhaps. Much like Otacon himself, his office teetered between moments of utter mess and unexpected carefulness. The file cabinets and bookshelves framing every wall were pridefully neat, but his desk itself, the place he actually worked, was buried under who even knew what. Pens and paperclips were practically embedded into the gray carpet, the roll-aways that got forgotten over time, and Snake was brought back to sitting here at the beginning of his service piloting Tetsujin. Every day, at the same times, sitting and listening to Otacon disappear into his own little technological world until he remembered Snake was there and would stammer out some sort of filler, some joke, to try and humanize the situation. That seemed like so long ago now.

Snake was in the doorway for only a moment before he realized there was something odd about Otacon’s chair. There was a strange quality to the light there, like heat waves over a street, something that messed with Snake’s head.

“Snake?” came Otacon’s voice and suddenly he… appeared. The light in the room shimmered slightly and then he was sitting at his desk as if he’d been there the whole time. “What are you doing here?”

Snake still didn’t know the answer to that question, even though seeing his friend’s frazzled face made something click in his brain, like setting something neatly back in its proper position. Instead he said “Were you just invisible?”

“Almost!” Otacon pushed up his glasses. “More like a reflection system, really…” He raised his forearm, revealing a strange black gauntlet clamped from wrist to elbow. “Stealth camouflage. You like it?”

“Seems useful.”

“I’ve had this prototype for awhile…” Otacon’s expression went melancholy. “If I could just figure out how to get it to work on Tetsujin… I think we could give those alien mechs a better run for their money, don’t you? It’s just so finicky right now, even on a human scale…” He frowned down at it and fiddled with the buttons.

“Otacon. Are you testing gadgets on yourself?”

“Oh come on. I’m not that bad.” He pressed something and the gauntlet unhinged, falling to his desk with a light tap. As if to allay Snake’s fears, he flexed his wrist and smiled.

Snake came in and helped himself to the lone chair in front of Otacon’s desk, slumping across it, knees wide. It was kind of funny. Like he was sitting at the principal’s office.

Otacon got up and circled to the other side of his desk to perch on its edge and regard Snake carefully, arms crossing over his skinny chest. He’d never been one to sit comfortably in power dynamics.

“How are you doing, Snake?” he asked, glancing over Snake’s sweat-darkened tank.

“Fine.”

“Mei Ling and Meryl?”

“Getting there.”

Otacon’s mouth thinned for a moment, his glasses low on his nose again already.

“I don’t wanna call you out or anything, but you don’t usually drop by this late. Also you smell like a gym sock.”

“I can leave if you want.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

With a small sigh, Otacon leaned back and gazed at the ceiling, popping his shoulder blades tiredly. The long line of his neck arched into his collar, where the first two buttons of his dress shirt were unlatched over his chest. Scraggly. When was the last time Otacon had actually slept?

And yet just watching him put Snake at ease somehow, drinking him in by the eyeful. This one person who was uncomplicated. Snake’s friend.

Otacon’s chin bobbed back down again to look at him, and all at once Snake realized why he was here.

“Last night you were telling me about your family,” Snake said, slowly, methodically. 

“… Yeah, I was.” 

“There’s some things I want you to know about me too.”

Otacon watched him quietly, waiting. Snake left him waiting for a long time in that little office, but he didn’t interrupt, just waited.

Finally Snake asked, “How much do you know about FOXHOUND?”

Otacon shook his head. “Just the bare minimum was in the file I got. You were the first soldiers to use 008s in an actual war setting, beyond a simulation. Some U.S. effort in Zanzibar Land, against a warlord. It was the first time any military had used mechs like that. That’s all I heard of it. The science side of things.”

“So I guess you didn’t get any of the other guys’ names.”

“I didn’t even get your name. It was my impression something went very wrong and you guys have to ghost around under your codenames still to stay protected.”

“I have to do that,” Snake corrected. “All the other guys are dead.”

Otacon’s eyes lowered, not surprised really but regretful, sad for these people he hadn’t known.

“Our leader,” Snake continued. “His codename was Gray Fox. He was… my friend.”

The story came out in small increments, between long patches of silence. After every sentence, Snake was sure he was done, but then his mouth would open again with something new. Even in this setting he was careful to keep classified information out, but that wasn’t what he found himself talking about anyway. Instead he was talking about Frank. Those simple moments when Dave had felt the yearning to be near him.

Sparring. Sleeping in the same rooms, or under the stars, or quietly not sleeping at all in respective clouds of cigarette smoke. Silent moments of understanding on the outskirts of their squadron’s machismo. Frank had put Dave’s soul at ease somehow. Not peacefully, anything but peacefully. It was more like the chaos waging inside each of them could stand side by side without judgment. Is that what Meryl saw in him? Is that what Snake had failed to protect?

It felt strange to talk about Frank so personally and yet be unable to tell Otacon his real name. Just Gray Fox. Some pawn, not Dave’s small naïve universe.

“I think that’s what fucked me up the most,” Snake said, in his pensive stupor. “Seeing him die. I don’t think that’ll ever get easier.”

The words had run out finally, and god, Snake wanted a cigarette. At some point Otacon had left his desk, had come to stand closer to Snake, right at the edge of Snake’s space, his arms hanging lamely at his sides as he listened through everything.

“It sounds like you loved him a lot,” Otacon said softly, the first time he’d spoken in any of this. 

Love… Dave had never called it that, but yeah. It was love, wasn’t it. Snake wasn’t sure he’d pen it as romantic—maybe it could have been one day—but it was love, plain and simple, the devotion of one soul for another, that desperate scrabbling desire to keep someone in your life for as long as you can. That someone had been wrenched from Dave’s fingers, wiped away like a bug.

He grunted, rocked one of his shoulders in an almost shrug.

Otacon reached out a hand for him, probably to touch his arm, some supportive act, but Snake tensed and Otacon pulled back as if burned.

“Snake… I think I owe you an apology.”

“An apology?” Snake asked. Shit, he hurt everywhere.

“We should have been able to detect those alien mechs sooner. That shouldn’t have _happened_ to you guys.” Snake couldn’t quite bring himself to look at Otacon’s face right now, but the anguish in his voice was wrenching.

“S’not your fault. That’s Miller’s job.”

“I’m trying to take care of _you_ here, ya know…” A high jumpy laugh, all bitter and sad. “Don’t go protecting _me_ again.”

“You want me to be angry at you or something?”

“No, I just… want you to know I’m sorry. For everything.” 

Whatever tension in the air dissipated and Snake looked up finally, expecting Otacon to have tears on his face but no, Otacon was standing there with firm resolve, staring down at Snake without pity but with… well. The devotion of one soul for another, maybe.

“I’m sorry it had to be you in all this, Snake.”

“It had to be somebody,” Snake muttered.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t deserve it.”

On some level Snake knew that, but the longer he walked on this path, the harder it became to feel it was true. Surely he deserved something awful by now. But Otacon at least would never think like that. He’d look on Snake with this overly expansive belief, always looking at a human.

“Thanks, Otacon,” Snake said. His voice was very tired for tonight.

Hell if the smile that came across Otacon’s weary face then wasn’t the best thing Snake had seen all day.

“You should get some sleep,” he said softly. “And maybe take a shower. You really do stink pretty bad.”

Snake grunted again, but stood up, feeling deeply muscle sore and not at all from the workout. Had he been tensed the entire time he was talking?

He realized Otacon was pointedly not touching him, and Snake didn’t really want that contact but he also didn’t want to leave with this weird distance between them so he cuffed Otacon’s elbow lightly.

“Goodnight,” Otacon said. “We’ll figure out how to get these new bastards, I promise. My hands are tied with all of this classified baloney, but… Well, there’s always the stealth camouflage.” The smile went larger and more lopsided, all self-conscious hope. “There’s always something, Snake.”

“Yeah,” Snake said, watching him closely, taking him in. “You might be right.”

Always something.

x

Life continued. It always seemed to do that.

Meryl and Mei Ling were more inseparable than usual, and under her copilot’s patient hovering, Meryl’s spunk began to creep back, or at least she was starting to learn how to fake it. Snake kept his distance, partly because Meryl kept hers, but also partly because this felt like Mei Ling’s territory. For now at least, the ladies didn’t need him.

Instead, he spent most of his free time with Otacon, expecting some amount of awkwardness after their little heart to heart but instead finding everything continuing almost absurdly normally. Otacon seemed more occupied with trying to find a way to fight those new alien mechs than with judging Snake’s revelations. He was absent-minded and himself, still that person at Snake’s side in unimportant moments.

Tetsujin and Aznable sat in the middle of the hangar, almost exactly where they’d been left that violent night, with huge white tarps flung over them. A messy system of scaffolding and pulleys brought techs and parts up and down under the white cloth to areas of damage. Neither mech was looking very good at the moment, and Otacon spent most of his days up on Tetsujin.

Snake had picked up a habit of visiting him, smoking cigarettes down on the catwalk and hollering bits of conversation up whenever Otacon’s head poked out from behind a pleat of the tarp.

“How’s the baby?”

“Very messed up.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Your confidence in me might be wishful thinking there, Snake.”

“It’s you, he’ll be fine.”

This was where Miller found him.

Snake had been waiting for an official chewing out, but the commander had been absent from his radar for a few days, apparently also preoccupied with matters other than punishing him. Now however, his boots clanked slightly as he came down the catwalk to where Snake stood smoking under Tetsujin.

Miller’s smile had returned.

Snake stubbed out his cigarette on the railing and stuck the half-smoked butt in his breast pocket.

“Snake,” Miller said, very amiably indeed. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yeah,” said Snake. He noticed with some distant humor as Otacon poked out from behind the tarp to say something above him before spotting the commander and ducking quickly back to work.

“I have information for you,” Miller said. “About what we were talking about the other day. FOXHOUND."

That was the last conversation Snake had been expecting.

“You found something?” Snake asked slowly.

“About the betrayal, yes,” said Miller. “I think I might be able to tell you who sold your team out.”

The silence that followed was deafening, despite the ambient clanking and clattering of the techs up on the mechs, the screaming buzz of drills and machines. The only sound that mattered now was Miller’s words and he was being quiet.

“Is this a conversation to have somewhere more private?” Snake asked, tense.

“No.” Miller’s lips pursed on the o almost gleefully. “Snake, this is highly classified information. I can’t just give it to you.”

“What are you saying exactly?”

“I’m telling you to earn it.”

He might as well have punched Snake in the face.

Punishment. For disobeying orders. For saving Meryl and Mei Ling. Miller had Snake wrapped around his finger, trapped by answers only the commander had. If Snake wasn’t going to play the perfect soldier of his own accord, Miller was going to make him.

Defiance roared in Snake’s chest like a caged animal, but he stood stock still.

Miller clapped his shoulder. “It’s a two-way street, Snake. I’ll help you, but you have to help me first. Seems fair, right? I think you can understand my reticence.”

What else did Miller know that he refused to share? About these aliens that kept falling to earth with no order or reason? About those spiny green mechs that had surprised them all, nearly killing them?

Had Miller been surprised at all? That smile was not the face of a man in desperation, so much as a man inconvenienced by deaths in his ranks. The inconvenience of dead bugs on your windowsill.

“We’re brothers in arms, you and I,” Miller said. “ _Brothers_ stand loyal.”

The bitterness at the back of Snake’s tongue finally spat out of him. “You’re not my brother,” he said before he could stop himself.

Miller’s smile didn’t budge. _I know something you don’t know, dear Snake._

“That’s no way to talk,” Miller said. He glanced up at the tarp billowing softly around Tetsujin. “I look forward to continuing to work with you Snake. You and I are mighty alike.”

He tapped his sunglasses, almost like a wink, and then left, just like that.

Snake was rooted with fury and the inability to do anything about it.

Up on the scaffolding, Otacon emerged from the tarp again, a messy-haired blob.

“Ok down there?” Otacon called, clearly tense as well. Perceptive of him.

Snake didn’t answer, instead fishing out his cigarette butt, rolling it between his fingers. He couldn’t seem to get to the point of relighting it. It wound up in his pocket again.

What the hell was he doing here?

He knew Otacon could sense when to shut up by now, so when he did the opposite of that and with a sudden sternness in his voice, Snake took notice.

“Snake… Can you come up here a minute?”

Without questioning, Snake hefted himself up the scaffolding in big, swinging strides.

He ducked between a pleat in the tarp, finding himself in a claustrophobic little nook against Tetsujin’s chest. Otacon was crouched at the very edge of the long gash cleaving Tetsujin’s torso, from the alien mech’s fist that had gone straight through it. Otacon gestured Snake over quickly, to squat beside him at the edge of the landing, the tarp softly moving around them like the walls of a cocoon. It was hot under here; Otacon’s face was red and his hair was sweaty at the grayish temples. He seemed much more occupied with something else, though.

“Something wrong?” Snake asked, suddenly aware of the intimacy of their surroundings, just the two of them in this closed off portion of Tetsujin’s tent.

Otacon glanced at him sideways. “I found something,” he murmured. Then from the recesses of Tetsujin’s massive scar, he pulled out half a foot of lean, black metal. It came to a point, and Snake knew immediately what it was.

It was a spike from the fist of the alien attacker, lodged into Tetsujin during the battle.

For a long moment Snake crouched there, his knees smarting on the scaffolding, and stared at this alien fragment in Otacon’s hands.

Otacon huffed a shaky laugh. “It feels like as soon as I hand it over to Miller, I’ll never see it again,” he murmured. “Classified, and all that. I kind of wonder… if we’ll even get the information we need to fight back before those mechs show up to kick our ass again.”

There was so much the higher ups knew that the soldiers didn’t. The soldiers did all the blind faith, all the running at these monsters guns blazing, shots in their arms, and how much of their losses were because of this ignorance clouding their eyes? Why couldn’t Snake shake this feeling that Meryl had almost been killed because Miller wasn’t sharing some crucial piece of information?

“Don’t give it to Miller,” Snake said abruptly.

Otacon turned to face him, fingers reflexively curling around the alien artifact. “Snake?”

“How much do you think you can find out about those alien mechs from this piece? On your own?”

Otacon’s eyes flitted to the tarp, blocking them off from the hangar’s cameras. “… I don’t know. But I can at least get an idea of what they’re made of. And what can beat them.”

“It’s a start.”

“… Snake.”

“Otacon.” Snake met his friend’s gaze stolidly. “Don’t do this if it doesn’t feel right. Forget I said anything, if you want. But I trust you. I trust you a helluva lot more than that commander.”

Otacon’s lips thinned. “I trust you too, Snake…” he said. Then, in one abrupt motion, as if the quickness might terminate any residual hesitation, he stuffed the alien fragment into the pocket of his labcoat. There it hung heavy but invisible. A tool perhaps. Negligible.

“I’ll see what information I can get you guys for the next fight.”

This decision was happening very quickly, and Snake wasn’t sure how to fortify his friend or even begin to thank him, but Otacon’s pressed-tight smile effectively ended the conversation.

“I trust you with the world, Snake,” he said. “Literally.”

They exited the tarp separately a few moments later. Nondescript.

x

end chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Stealth Camo = Gets a robot arm upgrade because why the hell not. Otacon is telling the truth when he implies it’s not dangerous to test it on himself, but he’s still testing it on himself. Don’t do that, man.


	4. Casualty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry for the long delay! I was distracted by other projects for awhile there and then this chapter fell into an endless whirlpool of self-criticism xD
> 
> By the way, my outline now says this fic is going to be 8 chapters long so we’re halfway there. Wahoo!
> 
> My outline also says this fic might be the first of a trilogy?? orz R.I.P. Mightyscrub – Beloved nerd and cat-roommate, they loved otasune and aliens and it got out of hand.
> 
> A moment of silence for this chapter's glossary, which was deleted because it didn't actually have any information or bad jokes of merit

Otacon wasn’t good at betrayal.

Snake had faith in him, but as the days passed since their little agreement, Otacon grew more and more disheveled and stressed. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew perfectly well they both might be in over their heads on this one, but they were running at it face-first anyway.

He conducted secret experiments on the alien artifact just like Snake asked him to, but he looked pale and jumpy the whole while.

Perhaps some of that anxiety rubbed off on Snake as well. He was having nightmares, not an uncommon occurrence but the frequency suggested he was more high-strung than he realized during the day. The nightmares came in two types—the horrible fear for his own safety, the classic running dreams, trying to escape from some darkness ever encroaching on his heels; and then there were the dreams about Gray Fox and the rest of his team at FOXHOUND, their deaths and his powerlessness to prevent it.

It’s not like he ever remembered his dreams very thoroughly, but they might have flavored the proceedings, given him a penchant for glancing at Otacon across the room, trying to pick out whether he’d eaten or if he’d gotten into any trouble.

One night, Snake came to visit Otacon’s office late, a routine these days since it was one of the only places without cameras it would make sense for them to be together. Otacon had taken to shutting his door.

His office was where he performed his small tests, gleaning supplies from his labs under the guise of continuing tests on his stealth camouflage instead.

He was tinkering now with the alien artifact on his desk, meticulously scraping samples from the surface onto a cloth, while Snake watched like a hawk from the visitor’s chair, smoking wordlessly.

“You’re stinking up the whole room,” Otacon told him, still frowning down at his work.

There was a glean of sweat on his forehead, and his bangs were somewhat greasy. He hadn’t showered today, probably.

“Are you alright?” Snake asked, tapping his cigarette into an empty soda can that Otacon had foisted on him as a makeshift ashtray.

“Fine,” Otacon snapped testily.

Snake raised an eyebrow.

Otacon puffed a breath of air out of his nose, turning the artifact carefully. “You’ve asked me that a million times the past couple days,” he mumbled. “Of course I’m not alright. I’m not exactly used to this sneaking around business.”

“Fair enough.”

Otacon glanced up at him over his glasses. “Can you really put it out, though? The smell… Little things are just driving me crazy tonight, I have to concentrate.”

Snake obeyed. He made a grouchy show of it, but he obeyed, dropping the extinguished cigarette into the can.

“Thank you,” said Otacon. “That stuff’ll kill you anyway.”

“So will aliens,” said Snake.

“Not these ones,” Otacon muttered. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Have you found anything out?”

Otacon shook his head. “I’ve got a vague structural idea but I still wanna figure out what it’s made of specifically…”

“Is it that hard?” Snake asked without thinking, and regretted it comically quickly when Otacon shot him a glare. “Nevermind. Maybe I’ll just get out of your hair for tonight.”

He pressed himself out of the chair, setting the soda can on the desk with a tap, and gazed down at Otacon who was pointedly watching the artifact again, ashamed to admit he wanted to work in peace but probably relieved. The top of his mousey head was disheveled.

Something in Snake’s chest tightened. He wanted to be able to protect this person.

“Do me a favor,” Snake said, perching his hands on the edge of the desk and leaning over, just above Otacon’s space.

Otacon’s eyes rolled up again to look at him. “I thought I was already doing one.”

“It’s important.”

“Ok, what?”

“Take a shower.”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “Really, Snake?”

“Get some sleep too.” Snake gazed at him solidly.

Otacon shook his head and pressed his thumb and forefinger up beneath his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Alright. It’s a deal.”

Snake smiled crookedly.

With that order of business taken care of, Snake took his leave. Otacon covered the artifact carefully before he opened the door.

“Thanks,” Snake told him in the doorway. “I’m counting on you.”

Otacon shot him a quick smile, digging into his cheek, and a thumbs up before the door closed behind him.

x

That Tuesday at 1:00 pm Snake queued up in the medical wing for his injection.

Meryl was there too. They stood with maybe two other pilots between them in the crowd in the hallway, carefully avoiding each other’s gaze. It was reaching a point now that surely continued distance would only exacerbate their problems, but Snake wasn’t sure what to do about it, how to mend their odd relationship or whether going back to the way things were would even benefit Meryl at all. Where did his selfishness end and her needs begin, that was the question.

With some chagrin, he missed her.

The wait was getting strangely long, until finally one of Hunter’s assistants stepped out with her hands in the air for everyone’s attention.

“There will be no injections this week,” she announced. “Dr. Hunter’s orders. Everyone can go back to their schedules.”

She repeated herself a few times to make sure the news really traveled through the queue.

This seemed like an opportunity. Naturally as breathing, Snake turned towards Meryl to quip about this, but Meryl had already gone. 

Figured.

Snake was on his way to lunch in defeat when the illusive Dr. Hunter herself passed by… or at least started to, before unexpectedly falling into pace at Snake’s side. Snake eyed her warily. She was dressed in full prim labcoat, her hair pulled back in a wavy ponytail that looked painfully tight at the temples.

“Yes?” he said.

“I would like to speak with you, Snake,” she said. “Come to my office, please.”

She was leading now, and like a good boy Snake followed. She walked with her hands in her pockets, taking him to the sliding glass door entrance of her labs alongside the medical wing, at which point one of her hands emerged with a keycard and swiped them inside. Snake had never seen her labs before. It was one of those areas of higher clearance that his brain had blocked out of his mental map of the base. A place to pointedly not think about.

Her office was almost immediately inside, so he didn’t get to see much of the actual labs, just a glimpse of white corridor and the scuttling of researchers in, inexplicably, goggles. She didn’t seem to have a problem with him peeking—hell she didn’t seem to think him capable of running on ahead into restricted areas either—but perhaps she had him penned correctly, because he obediently followed her into the office and sat in the visitor’s chair. It was almost a mirror image of Otacon’s office, but missing every small detail that defined who Otacon was. This was like a blank, sterile version and it was slightly discomfiting.

She perched on the edge of her desk, another mirror image that was strange in its imperfection. Her skirt was high on her thighs in this position, and she crossed her very nice legs, but Snake was a lot less interested in this business than he once was. He found himself preferring Otacon’s scrubby jeans. He tried not to think about that too hard.

“Don’t look so suspicious,” Dr. Hunter said, smiling thinly. “You’re not in trouble. I brought you here to thank you.”

Snake leaned back in his chair, knees spreading. “Thank me? Didn’t realize I’d done you a favor.”

Her smile stayed on her face as if plastered there, not quite meeting the distracted intelligence of her eyes. “Yes… I’m sure Commander Miller has no love for your most recent actions in the field, but you did manage to rescue 011, and that’s personally important to me. You see… Mei Ling and I have become friends.”

“Cute,” said Snake, feeling an inexplicable distrust.

Her smile pulled at the corners, tight, a held-back frown. “Mei Ling is the only person here who has treated me like a friend.”

“It’s one of her strongsuits.”

“Even so, I’m thankful to her. Therefore, I’m thankful to you for valuing her life.”

“Is that really all, doctor? It seems like you could have thanked me for that in the hall.”

Her face went blank, a shutter falling down.

“I feel I have underestimated you,” she said slowly, almost to herself. “I think you and I… we could have been friends too, if I’d had better foresight.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at. You’ll have to spell it out for me, I’m pretty dense.”

“No, Snake, you are very intelligent and therein lies the problem.” Her not-quite-smile returned. “You see, I’ll be going on a trip soon and I’m lamenting what could have been.”

“Weird timing for a vacation.”

“Indeed.” She studied his face carefully, as if contemplating telling him something.

He must not have passed the test, because she didn’t.

“Here’s a tip for you, from one friend to another,” she said, standing again, looking suddenly tired. “You’ll notice some fatigue now that I’ve taken you off of your injections. Caffeine will only make it worse, so keep yourself appropriately hydrated.”

Snake frowned at her, wanting to demand answers from whatever secret was sitting just underneath this conversation out of his grasp. Instead he said, “Thanks, doc.”

She strode to him and put a hand on his shoulder, her long slim fingers surprisingly strong, but then he’d already known that from getting shots from her.

“You’re right not to trust Miller,” she said, very close to his ear. “You’re also right not to trust me.”

With something of a pat, she ushered him up to lead him back out again.

x

He told Otacon of course, that night in his office. Otacon paced back and forth, damn near burning a path in the rug.

“You think Naomi’s up to something?” he asked.

“I’ve never been able to figure out how she fits into all this,” said Snake.

“Maybe you’re just being paranoid.”

“You think?”

Otacon sighed. “Not really. Maybe I’m paranoid too.”

He stopped his pacing in front of Snake, his arms hanging at his sides. He was wearing his usual lab coat, but the dress shirt underneath was fully buttoned for once. It seemed he’d taken Snake’s mother hen routine to heart and cleaned himself up, at least for today.

“The way she said it… a trip…” Snake muttered. “Sounds like she’s raring to run away from something.”

“Covering her back, you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Otacon made a frustrated noise. “God… Don’t we have enough to worry about with these aliens… Why do the humans have to be so complicated too…?”

“We don’t really do simple as a species.”

Otacon scrubbed a hand through his hair, mussing it with the heel of his palm. The look on his face… He was scared. Snake had dragged him into something that was looking increasingly risky.

“Otacon…”

“We’ll get through this, Snake,” Otacon interrupted. “I’m almost done with the substance tests. On the artifact, I mean. Just waiting for my computer to finish analyzing it. You cover us on the human side, and I’ll cover you from the aliens, alright?”

Snake watched him carefully for a long moment before nodding. They were back to back on this one.

Except at the moment, they were standing front to front, and looking down on Otacon’s determined expression made Snake’s chest tighten again. _I want to protect you_. And something else. Maybe he was very proud of Otacon in this moment.

The tension surrounding them, this feeling that it was just the two of them against the world and then some, had been suffocating them for days, and he could see that in the weariness of Otacon’s face, the lines around his eyes, framing the firmness of his resolve. He stood very straight-shouldered for a moment, watching Snake, then slowly the determination of his face melted into something softer. Trust, belief. A certain expression that was meant only for Snake.

“We make a pretty unorthodox team, huh,” said Otacon.

“A good team.”

“That waits to be seen, I guess.”

What did Snake want to say right now? There was something bubbling up in his throat, but he couldn’t sort it out enough to get his mouth around it in the proper words. The realization of how important Otacon was felt like a physical thing beside him. This was his partner.

Otacon took a step forward, encroaching timidly into Snake’s space.

“Snake…” he said. His tongue swiped quickly between his lips and he frowned. Snake could almost see the words shuffling through his brain as he sought out the right ones. Snake was noticing a lot of things at the moment actually, like the slope of Otacon’s nose, the interplay between skin and the curl of hair at his forehead. “I know it hasn’t been that long,” Otacon said, his voice cracking awkwardly, “but I consider you… a very good friend of mine.” There was an urgency to his words, like a last confession, his eyes flitting up to meet Snake’s gaze, all nerves.

“Otacon.” No. That wasn’t his name, was it? “… Hal.” That felt weird coming out of his mouth, but strangely necessary at the moment. In front of him a certain unidentifiable something crossed Hal’s face before carefully being tempered down. “You’re a real good guy,” Snake finished.

Hal laughed jumpily, as if accepting some sort of rejection, and suddenly Snake found himself reaching forward and taking Hal’s shoulders in his palms. That shut down the self-deprecation immediately.

It was a soft grip. Snake didn’t touch people like this, carefully, long. Maybe Gray, the favorite husky back home, but not people. There was a fear there, of some sort of pain or harm seeping through his hands, or worse, something creeping into him that he couldn’t control, but the look in Hal’s eyes at this too-gentle touch... some big-eyed yearning, a desperation as Snake’s thumb traced near his clavicle under his shirt...

Snake actually shrugged before leaning forward.

He pressed his lips to Hal’s, brief and careful. Midway through pulling back, Hal grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him back down again, clumsy and urgent, and their lips smeared, careful touches, breaths through noses.

Then Hal’s back was up against the wall, glasses clicking askew against Snake’s knuckles as his hands came up to cup his face. 

Snake’s elbows framed him, muscles tense, and he could feel the collar of Hal’s shirt brushing his own throat. The pads of Hal’s fingers scrambled at the back of Snake’s neck, pulling him closer. 

Despite the rough need of their bodies, the kisses were almost soft, clumsy, lips snagging on stubble, like they were both trying to kiss as many places on the other’s face as possible before their time ran out. The heels of Snake’s palms guided Hal’s chin upwards and he caught Hal’s mouth again, deep, warm, wet. A part of Snake was scared shitless at this development and not entirely sure why, but it’s hard to be scared with someone you like pressing so close to you.

Hal puffed a gasp of a breath against Snake’s teeth, and it was already winding down, last shuffling kisses, Hal’s hand cupping the back of Snake’s head.

Snake was in deeper trouble than he’d realized.

“Maybe now isn’t the right time for this,” he murmured against Hal’s jaw, and Hal’s breathy laugh shifted the hair at Snake’s temple.

“You’re probably right…” Hal’s hands fell down his shoulders, hung against his arms.

Snake pulled back, finding it very difficult indeed, and looked him over. Hal’s dopey smile made him relax somewhat. The glint of happiness in Hal’s eyes had a certain desperation to it, a definite awareness of the danger of their circumstances, but the happiness was still there, a hopeful burning thing.

When would the right time be exactly? Was there any such thing for people like them?

Hal’s fingers were idly playing at the fabric of his shirt.

“… I wanna do this right,” Snake said, almost to himself.

“Uh huh,” said Hal, who was now watching Snake’s mouth with no subtlety whatsoever.

Snake smirked helplessly, then removed Hal’s glasses between thumb and forefinger, folding them and depositing them in Hal’s chest pocket.

“Fuck it,” Snake said. “C’mere.”

Hal did, and they continued.

x

When Snake returned to the barracks he slept well, without nightmares.

Trust a good thing to be interrupted.

He woke right before dawn to flashing red lights and an alarm that shrieked like a banshee.

It was not the fire alarm, nor an earthquake drill. The base was under attack.

In between the hollering horns, Miller’s voice spoke tensely over the intercom as Snake rolled out of bed and immediately into his boots.

“Pilots to defense positions,” Miller kept repeating. “Pilots to defense positions. We are under attack, this is not a drill. This is not a drill.”

Snake hustled out into the hallway in a stream of other soldiers filtering down the barracks. Some of them would go for cover. The pilots who had trained for such an emergency—Snake included—were headed for the hangar.

Tetsujin was still out of commission, but Snake had been assigned a temporary replacement 010 in the interim. He went immediately for this mech, clambering up the catwalks amongst techs furiously preparing for multiple take-offs. Miller was frantically trying to debrief them over the intercom, but his descriptions of their attackers were too harried and wild to do much good.

Snake didn’t expect a wide-eyed Hal to meet him on the catwalk just below his 010. This was not where Hal was supposed to be.

“Snake,” he said breathlessly. A hickey had purpled under his jaw. “I need to talk to you.”

“Don’t really have time for that.”

“I know but…” Hal seemed to realize their situation all at once, the urgency that Snake get the hell going as well as the fact that they were out here in the open, cameras watching. He swore under his breath.

“We’ll talk later.”

“Snake. Be careful, ok? Be really careful.”

“Sure thing.” Snake chuffed the bottom of Hal’s chin lightly with a fist. “I need you too,” he said seriously, belying this action. “On the Codec.”

“Yeah…” Hal said distantly, then his brows furrowed in growing steadfastness. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ll be there.”

They just sort of looked at each other for a quick moment, but that was all that Snake could allow before turning to mount the ladder into his substitute 010.

Whatever Hal was sitting on would have to come later.

x

Snake’s new mech was the same model as Tetsujin but felt ever so slightly wrong, like a car that’s not your own. It didn’t have a dumb nickname or the wear of Snake’s hands at the controls.

Now wasn’t the time to be sentimental, however. Right out of the hangar, it was clear what their goddamn problem was.

A pair of enormous alien creatures, bigger than anything they’d faced yet, were literally coiled around the entire compound, a pair of massive blue snakes curling a scaly circle around their base of command, not quite touching the buildings but only by a few uncomfortable yards. For some reason they weren’t attacking, simply circling each other around the premises, a slithering threat, their great yellow-eyed heads pulling back reptilian sneers to loose flickering tongues.

Hovering in the air directly above was one of the alien mechs, spiny and foreboding in the dim gray light of pre-dawn. It simply hung there, as if waiting for its prey to emerge from the hangar.

_Well, here I am_ , Snake thought.

“All 09s and 010s circle the premises, get those twin snakes in your sights,” Miller’s voice was commanding over the Codec. “Engage only when you can confirm minimal damage to base! Snake and Silverburgh, focus on the mech, but hang back. Protecting the base is our first priority!” 

Snake knew Meryl and Mei Ling were out here too, somewhere in a pair of separate 010s while Aznable was down, but he didn’t know which ones. Everything was shifted just slightly out of its proper place in this fight. It made Snake damn uneasy.

And then as it did so often, Hal’s voice steadied him. Even though it spoke in challenge.

“Commander, why isn’t the mech attacking?” Hal demanded. “He’s just sitting there. Are we receiving any attempts at communication?”

“Negative,” said Miller. “Pilots, proceed with caution.”

“Commander—“ Hal started, in a tone of voice that said he was going to overstep and get himself in trouble. Snake interrupted him.

“Meryl, pincer motion, out!” Snake barked. One of the amassed 010s split from the ranks to jet with Snake toward the alien mech, Meryl listing to flank the enemy from the left while Snake took the right.

Exactly on cue, the twin snakes reared back with deep, unearthly spitting noises, coiling closer to the buildings, their massive muscular bodies beginning to squeeze the walls, rubble falling in big chunks, windows cracking.

Mei Ling’s voice on a distant Codec channel led the other mechs onward, boom cannons preparing, great mechanical arms looping around the snakes’ heads before they could strike… But that wasn’t Snake and Meryl’s fight. They were after the alien mech, which had already begun jetting away backwards towards the mountains on the horizon.

“We’ll blast him from both sides,” Snake said, as he and Meryl gained on the alien machine, getting closer and closer, preparing their cannons. “He’s bound to try and take us out with that electricity attack so keep on your toes.”

“Roger,” said Meryl, and that was it.

How was her 010 treating her? The controls were certainly different than 011… He would have to trust her adaptability.

Snake had taken up a bad habit of trusting people lately.

The compartment of the alien mech’s chest lowered and the now-familiar crackling ball of electricity began to form in its core, sending their Codecs to static, but Meryl and Snake were still in sync, their 010s pulling up to the mech’s sides in unison.

Predictably, the alien didn’t go quietly. As Meryl and Snake shot their cannons, the alien mech spun quickly toward Snake and sent its lightning hurtling at him. It was easy to dodge in this configuration. He and Meryl should have been able to duck gracefully into their next maneuver…

But Snake hadn’t accounted for revenge.

The alien shooting at Snake was apparently enough for Meryl to take matters into her own hands, and her 010 surged forward to brutally start beating at the enemy with closed fists. An angry, clambering attack with no finesse. The alien mech turned to grapple with her.

After he dodged the lightning, Snake’s Codec returned to a flurry of fierce swearing from Meryl.

“Get a grip, Meryl!” he snapped, but the two wrestling mechs were already doing irreparable damage to each other, their great fingers peeling up layers of metal screechingly like tearing flesh. Snake hustled to join in this awkward fumbling of limbs and strength. The Codec went to static again as a high-pitched humming began and the alien mech’s center glowed fiercely, preparing for another of its signature attacks.

“Meryl get out of the way!” but it was no use, the Codec was down and Meryl and the alien were clamped together too tightly, like one conjoined creature. They were pressed chest to chest and so the lightning attack not only took out Meryl’s 010 soundly, but burst an enormous hole straight through its middle. She finally unlatched, arms listless, to go plummeting to the ground with a horrible crash.

Snake started towards her as the alien jetted back for its escape, but over the Codec Meryl shouted: “I’m alright! Get that bastard, Snake!” Her voice was raw and fraught with anger and regret. She let out an animalistic growl and that was the soundtrack to Snake’s resumed pursuit.

He managed to grab the alien mech by the back of its ankle, and it spun to crunch a fist directly into the side of Snake’s 010’s head. Alerts sounded in his cockpit.

“Dammit! Snake, we’ve lost visual contact with you!” Hal cried over the Codec. “Repeat: We no longer have a visual on your position. Be careful!”

But if Snake was good at anything, it was close quarters combat. The two machines kept pummeling forward toward the mountains, but as they spun and jet onward in midair they also fought. There was hardly any coordination, just brutality and clumsy scrambling hands and limbs, just ruthlessly beating at whatever surface Snake could find. They went hurtling into a mountainside still pounding at each other, but the good news was Snake wound up on top.

He just kept punching and punching at the mech underneath him, snapping off its huge green spines like toothpicks, ramming his fists down into it until the metal gave way, until the chest cavity caved, until it began to look less and less like it had the shape of anything… Snake could recall beating people like this, the crunch of bone and spray of blood… It was rhythmic, and the strange adrenaline rush of the attack’s massive scale urged him onward. It was the thrill of a kill without the twisting nausea of a dead man with a shapeless face underneath you. A mech’s fists rather than his own.

“Snake, what’s going on?” Hal’s voice, harried and fretful. “Snake, do you read us?”

“Snake, answer us! We don’t have visual contact, what’s the enemy’s status?” Miller.

The arms of Snake’s 010 weren’t slowing however. It was like he was possessed by Meryl’s ferocity, by the pain and anger in her voice, by that feeling of how alone he and Hal were in a base full of secrets, by the desperation of trying to survive on this crazy fucked up planet that was being invaded…

In a moment of bizarre anger, Snake hooked his 010’s fingers in the face of the alien mech and peeled it aside, wanting to get a glimpse into this asshole’s cockpit…

Then everything stopped, the rage eddied, the brutality died mid-strike.

Despite the warped form of the alien mech itself, the cockpit was almost exactly the same as the one Snake himself sat in. And there below him, bloodied and dead, was the pilot.

It did not look like an alien.

It looked like an old man.

His neck was broken, head twisted at an odd angle with a bloody gaping mouth amidst the short-circuiting of machinery around him. His hair was white, chest thin and frail.

This looked like a human.

The sickness of the kill sank into Snake’s bones, his hands slowly uncurling from his control levers, the pain of gripping his steering too hard a ghostly mimicry of busted knuckles. He’d beaten this old man to death. He had blood on his hands.

“Snake?” Hal’s voice was in his ear, frantic and broken. “Snake!”

Snake swallowed thickly on the nausea of the discovery he was staring down at. “I’m here,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m alright. Enemy defeated.”

“Oh god,” said Hal with relief.

“You know the drill, Snake,” said Miller. “Burn the bastard.”

Neither of them could see what Snake had uncovered. For a moment he wanted to protest, but then with another wave of sickness he realized… either Miller knew this already or he didn’t care. It was no use to argue. It had never been any use.

He followed his orders and burned the mech, but not before carefully replacing its face over the body of the old man, like the lid of a coffin.

The secrets went up in flames.

x

On paper, their defense of base was a rousing success. Mei Ling managed to command her troops in an attack that kept damages to the compound minimal, and later led twin lines of mechs carrying the snake creatures’ massive corpses off to the ocean for disposal. Rescuing Meryl from her ruined 010 off in the desert was a hassle, but she was unhurt. Snake was in Commader Miller’s good books again, treated like a damn hero. He’d proven that the alien mechs could be defeated by the 010s given the right circumstances. Humanity’s firepower was looking adequate again.

Snake went through the rounds of debriefs and congratulations in a fog. The only thing that really grounded him was Hal’s constant presence at his side. Wherever he went, tossed from meeting to meeting, Hal silently followed him.

Finally, when the time had come for Snake to return to the barracks for a well-earned rest, it was almost noon, and Hal followed him there as well.

There were cameras in the halls, but not in Snake’s room. Surely it was not too strange for a friend to visit after a nerve-wracking fight.

They both sat on Snake’s bed, Hal’s shoulder pressed against his. They absently leaned into each other, as if holding each other up.

“Snake…” Hal murmured after a long moment of silence. He kept fiddling with his hands, squeezing at the heels of his own palms and twisting up his fingers. “The piece of alien technology I’ve been working on… I completed the substance test last night after you left.” He swallowed, his voice thin and croaky. “Those alien mechs are made of the exact same alloys as Tetsujin. It’s the same metals that go all the way back to the 008s’ makeup… It’s almost like it was made from the 008s, some sort of divergent evolution…”

“Get to the point, Hal,” Snake said gruffly.

“… It’s like this technology is _human_.” 

They fell into another long silence, the air between them tense. Snake’s jaw worked as he stared at a point on the floor between his boots.

“I thought you might say that,” he grunted.

In all of this, it seemed there was only one constant: Hal at his side, listening for what to do next.

Snake told him everything that had happened.

x

end chapter four


	5. Stealth Camo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have used up my life supply of ellipses in this chapter...
> 
> Thank you so much again and always for your support, guys! This is a fabulous community and I love ya'll

Hal sat with his head in his hands, his glasses pushed up on the nest of his hair so his palms could press into his face.

“What have I done…” His voice came out muffled. “What have I been doing this whole time…”

Snake was halfway to getting a cigarette but had frozen at that point, endlessly rolling his crumpled-up box of Lucky Strikes between his hands without actually pulling one out. He couldn’t seem to bring his eyes up from the floor.

“It doesn’t make sense…” Snake muttered. “These great big alien monsters, fighting alongside humans… but it doesn’t feel right either. It feels more like a war than an invasion.”

Hal rubbed at his eyes firmly. “If it’s a war, what side are we on exactly?”

Snake didn’t have an answer for that so he didn’t say anything.

With a long exhale through his nose, Hal raised his head finally, blinking rapidly. “I swore I’d never fall into the same trap,” he croaked. “I’d use my skills to atone for… Stupid. I should’ve known better. Of all people I should’ve known happy science is only in the movies.”

Snake finally managed to glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

This strange attraction he had developed for Hal… it was hard to pinpoint when exactly it had started, when the details of Hal’s face had gone from simply friendly familiarity to something different. In a moment like this, Snake’s emotions had a habit of shutting themselves down, stepping away from the tumultuous visceral confusion of having been used, having killed a human being this morning, and standing to the side as if Snake was looking at himself from afar, without investment. If someone had asked Snake how he was feeling right now, he wouldn’t have known the answer. It was too far away.

But he could see what Hal was feeling, written all over his face. In a backwards way, Hal’s emotions felt more real than Snake’s. Hal’s self-loathing, his anger, his betrayal, his deep disappointed sadness…

Hal still had that hickey above his collar. It was strange to think how quickly that fumbling happiness of theirs was gone.

“Hal…” Snake said slowly. “You told me once you didn’t want to become a pawn. How much are you willing to fight for that?”

There was a long thick silence.

“I made these mechs,” said Hal, his voice small but firm. “If they’re doing something that’s-- Well. It’s my duty to police them. That’s my duty to you too, Snake.” He said the last bit like an apology.

“So what are we going to do?”

There it was—they had already started on this path, hadn’t they? Together, they were somehow the sort of people to Do Something. It was rather new territory for Snake, but in all of this it was the only thing that seemed right. Even if it was just the two of them, they couldn’t just take this passively.

And besides, they did make a good team.

Hal had gone quiet again, but he was thinking now. The sadness was still running rampant in his eyes, but it was taking backseat to what needed to be done. He too was ready to take action without hesitation. Maybe they had both changed rather alarmingly without even realizing it these past months.

“My stealth camouflage…” Hal murmured, eyebrows slackening with realization. “We’ll never find answers through upfront interrogation… But we can do some snooping. There are such expansive restricted areas on this base. For all we know the answers could all be here already. If I wore the stealth camouflage, I could probably get into some of the higher clearance labs undetected.”

“No,” said Snake.

“No?” Hal repeated, affronted.

“You said it yourself, that prototype isn’t perfect. There’s still a chance somebody’ll notice you’re just reflective instead of invisible.” Snake was gaining confidence however. The wheels were turning, and he finally plucked out a cigarette and placed it at the corner of his mouth. “That’s a job for a soldier, not a civilian. I’ll do it.”

Hal looked rather chagrined but didn’t argue. He pulled his glasses back down onto his face, adjusting them at his nose, as Snake lit his cigarette.

“There’s no chance we’ll get into Miller’s wing,” Hal said. “That’s the highest clearance level and it’s bound to be crawling with guards. But some of the labs… Like Naomi’s. Naomi and I have the same clearance level, technically, but we don’t have access to each other’s labs. Different keycards… But I might be able to hack into her lab’s security system. If I can trick it into accepting my card, we could get in. There are a number of areas like that on this base.”

“I think you’ve already hit the nail on the head with the good doctor. I’d like to know what she’s been up to.”

“Yes… I’m not sure her labs can tell us what this war is about, but…” Hal glanced at Snake nervously. “Those injections. It can at least give us an idea what she’s been doing to _you_.”

“It’s a place to start,” Snake agreed. “I’d like to know more about that trip of hers as well.”

Hal nodded lamely, and for a moment they simply sat side by side in the smell of Snake’s cigarette smoke. The burn of his lungs was invigorating, a reminder that he was alive.

Hal slowly shifted a hand to rest on Snake’s thigh, close to his knee, and squeezed gently. “We won’t be able to communicate while you’re sneaking around,” Hal murmured. “Let’s think up a plan.”

x

The stealth camouflage was simple from a user standpoint. It was more light-weight than it looked, adjusting to Snake’s more muscular arm, and a panel on his inner forearm that looked something like a calculator was what passed for controls. Hal waved his hands dismissively, irritated in his nervousness, and told Snake to only use two buttons—full camo or no camo at all.

“Don’t mess around with the rest or you’ll just break it and get caught.”

So Snake turned the camo on and, with a thumbs up from Hal, exited Hal’s office into the hallway.

They’d chosen to work at night of course, but even so Snake had only gotten an inkling of sleep since his rude awakening the night before. His body ached, both with the tension and with fatigue.

It was strange. Looking down at himself, it was painfully obvious to Snake that he was just reflecting the environment. His own awareness of where his arms and legs were made them stand out perfectly in his vision, particularly when he moved. With no little paranoia, he stuck to the walls and walked slowly, keeping a wary eye on the security cameras. They all sat still, ignorant and unseeing, staring ahead at supposedly empty halls.

Except every so often one of them would turn to look directly at him for a moment before returning calmly to its position. Snake didn’t worry too much about that because he knew those particular ones weren’t Miller’s eyes—they were Hal’s, hacking the security footage in short bursts to keep track of Snake’s progress.

At least that was the plan.

By the time he reached the secured entrance to Dr. Hunter’s labs, the hairs at the back of his neck were firmly upright with the creeping dread of vulnerability. He ignored it and palmed Hal’s card key. If Hal was successful with his computer tricks, the door should accept it, mistaking it for Dr. Hunter’s.

Snake glanced around the hall, waiting.

Then slowly, each of the four security cameras in sight turned to face the wall, away from the door, blinding themselves.

Thanks, Hal.

Too quickly to allow for hesitation, Snake swiped the card.

The doors slid open.

He half expected an alarm to go off the moment he stepped inside, but there was nothing, only the smooth woosh of the doors closing again behind him. He was in.

The labs were empty, the highly paid scientists no doubt resting in their dorms, but an almost eerie whiteish glow suffused the place. Gingerly, Snake passed the offices and walked the copious facilities. Long white lab tables and supplies, locked steel cabinets. It was frustratingly innocuous, all the actual experiments closed away, sleeping like their masters.

The labs themselves were no good, so Snake returned to the offices, and in particular Dr. Hunter’s, the one she’d so generously invited him to.

A light was on inside, but Hunter was nowhere to be seen. Her neatly sterile environment was almost as closed-away as the labs, but a series of papers were stacked on her desk, and that was better than nothing. Snake rounded to the desk’s other side, bumping aside the chair, and began sifting through everything. It was all standard patient health records, yet large portions of each file seemed to be missing. He couldn’t find a single note about the injections anywhere.

He lifted a large manila envelope to check inside and found nothing but finished crossword puzzles. Games. It was all just useless personal paraphernalia of this icy woman… He turned to scan the walls behind the desk, her diploma, a watercolor, but not a single face or personal photo.

Then something clicked behind him.

He immediately dropped the files and spun around.

Dr. Hunter was standing there, looking directly at him, and she’d just closed the door.

Her hair was very subtly awry, somewhat greasy, somewhat hanging out of her ponytail, but her face was entirely blank. She slid her hands into her labcoat pockets.

“Testing the stealth camouflage, Dr. Emmerich?” she asked.

Options scurried through Snake’s head. Ridiculously, he almost wished he could ask Hal about his next move, not for advice but for permission.

_I could kill her_ , Snake thought. It would be easy, all things considered. He could slip out and there would be no way to pen the crime on him. He had broken necks before. But instinct counted for a lot in these situations, and he knew deep in his gut that if she died now, her secrets would die with her. She knew something, impossible to say what but something important.

Slowly he raised his arm and pressed the off button on his stealth camouflage and with a flicker became visible again.

Her face remained calm, but there was more force to it now, it was more of a mask.

“Solid Snake,” she said. “Well, this is interesting.”

She stepped forward, with prideful carefulness, and sat in the visitor chair, crossing her legs. How had she snuck up on him in those heels? This woman was dangerous.

Yet she was watching him calmly from the position of the underling, while he stood behind the desk.

Slowly, he also sat, in her desk chair.

They watched each other.

“You’ve impressed me,” she said at last, exhaling heavily as if resenting the admission. “Though I must say, Dr. Emmerich’s involvement comes as a surprise.”

“He’s tougher than he looks,” Snake grumbled.

“I’ve no interest in what exactly you’re trying to do here, so we’ll save time omitting that,” she said. She folded her hands over her exposed knee, skin on skin and the gleam of dark red fingernails. “Perhaps I’m glad you’re here. I was beginning to regret not telling you.”

“You can speak in riddles, or you can tell me why you haven’t called Miller yet.” Snake pulled out his cigarettes, the familiar shuffling motions of putting one between his lips and lighting it, a show of guts. Besides, if this did all go to shit, he wanted a cigarette in his mouth for it.

She smiled quickly, without humor or joy.

“For this moment and this moment alone, Snake, I believe we are on the same side, though I resent it. I’ve been doing some snooping of my own around this place… It’s the entire reason I’m here, actually. Yes, I am a researcher, but that became secondary to my true purpose a long time ago… I suppose it would be easier to start from the beginning.”

“Please do, doctor.” His grin pinched his cigarette between his teeth. “Remember, I’m not that clever.”

She watched him, eyes dark and sharp. “We have a loved one in common,” she said. “Frank Jaeger.”

Gray Fox.

Snake frowned ever so slightly, removing his cigarette for a long exhale. The burning in his chest wasn’t just the smoke. He could picture Frank’s face in his mind, that closed-off smile.

Somehow, Dr. Hunter’s piercing gaze from such a placid face was almost familiar.

“How do you know that name?” he asked.

“He was my brother.” The words held no emotion, but her eyes softened. Or perhaps he just imagined it.

“Frank didn’t have a sister.”

“… Perhaps not. But he was my brother.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Family is complicated, Snake. I was a war orphan. Frank rescued me. Fed me, gave me clothes and an identity. Jaeger means Hunter in German. He raised me like his own blood.”

It still didn’t make sense. Picturing Frank with a child didn’t fit into Snake’s idea of that man he loved and almost-knew. Yet he believed her. The way she was staring him down, with a softness but a determination, as if daring him to call out her weakness. That was what love was in Snake’s experience. A vulnerability you took pride in, something important enough to bare your neck to the entire world in announcement.

“I never knew Frank was capable of that sort of tenderness,” he murmured.

“It was never tender. Just kind.”

“I’m… so sorry.”

Her expression changed back to the haughtiness he was more familiar with. Maybe that was easier for her. “Before you start to berate yourself, let me tell you that I know you weren’t the one who betrayed FOXHOUND so long ago.”

“You know who did?”

“Yes. It was Frank.” She leaned forward, hunching like a dragon over some small treasure. “He was the one who purposely gave away your position, the one who saw to it that you were all destroyed. Or mostly, anyway. Your survival, Snake, was an unfortunate oversight.”

Anger erupted in him, but at the same time Snake could hear Gray Fox’s voice.

_Solid Snake. Let me ask you something._

_Would you kill me?_

“That’s impossible,” Snake growled, low and dangerous.

“Is it? Snake… There’s a lot you don’t know about that mission. About my brother.” All at once, she seemed to catch herself, check her own glee at throwing barbs at him, and settled back into her chair, her condescension mellowing into careful emotionlessness again. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me as well. You’re intelligent. Surely you suspect I haven’t been injecting you with some harmless steroid.”

Snake’s jaw worked, glaring daggers at her, but instead of answering he placed his cigarette between his lips and puffed, smoking quickly, the air barely reaching him.

“I suppose you can call it a super soldier serum,” she continued primly. “It’s a sort of nanomachine technology that boosts strength and endurance. It makes you more powerful, to withstand wear from piloting the mechs but also to heighten your abilities on the battlefield. You’ve grown more muscular these past months, yes? You have been pushed to the ultimate peak of your physical abilities. You’ve become our machine, to match your mech.”

“I feel like you’re about to tell me the catch.”

“Yes. Human bodies can’t take such a constant barrage of energy… It is like living your life in fast forward. You will always be at a physical apex, but this concentrated sort of life will be necessarily short. Experiments have found the subjects aging at an accelerated rate, their bodies unable to handle the intensity for a normal lifespan.”

She said it with such medical detachment, information that hit Snake in the gut. He’d never thought he had much of a future, and yet whatever wisps he might have hoped for got torn brutally in the fingers of this reality. He shook his head, stubbing his spent cigarette butt into her clean, neat little desk.

“How the hell is that ethical?” he snapped. “We never consented to this!”

“Ethics?” The word was almost a laugh, her condescension returning with a hint of mania, trimmed eyebrows digging up into her hairline. “The world doesn’t care about the ethics of who defends them from the big scary universe. They just care that the job gets done.”

“What about Mei Ling?” he bit out. “Your friend? She gets those shots too.”

She looked away, her smile twisted and bitter. “I never said I was a good person…” But her hands on her knee had curled, her fingernails digging into her own flesh like claws. “I wasn’t the one who developed this serum—that was my predecessor, Dr. Clark—but I have continued its work in an effort of revenge. I wanted to find out who is really behind this war, who is creating these serum soldiers and for what reason. The best way to get information is from the inside. In the process, I have worked on the nanomachines myself, and yes, I have harmed a lot of people with them. But I can say at least that my serum is more humane than the prototype that was tested on my brother. It’s a watered down version that must be replenished week to week... Frank’s was full power, one shot that lasted his lifetime.”

Snake levelled himself, his fury and the desperate scrabbling of his soul, that mental fight or flight, clinging to the desire not to get swallowed up by this universe, squashed like a bug by these people more powerful than him… He saw the crushed-in face of Frank’s 008, lined with gore. He saw the old man he had killed that morning, neck twisted. “Frank was a serum soldier?” he asked, as his anger began to sink into a deep weariness.

“Yes.” She took a few long breaths and turned to him again. She was fighting for calm too. “The very first one. He was an experiment. So were you. The entire mission in Zanzibar Land… The true aim was never to depose that warlord. He just served as a convenient enemy for your team to fight, and all the while your superiors were watching you like scientists over a cage of rats. You were the first team to pilot mechs outside of a simulation, the 008s, and Frank was the first serum soldier designed to complement them.”

“… Was it painful for him?”

“Incredibly. As I said, the serum was worse back then. Still a prototype.”

“How could you just sit by while your predecessor did that to him?” There wasn’t accusation in his voice, not nearly as much as there should be. Just a question for information.

“I didn’t have clearance at the time. I had no idea that’s what the nanomachines were being used for, back then… I learned it all in Frank’s final letter to me. He left me an encoded confession. A suicide note, I suppose.”

“Did he suffer so much that he would kill himself and his friends? Is that why he sold us out in Zanzibar Land?”

She shook her head. “He knew he was powerless to prevent serum soldiers and mechs from becoming the new vogue of war. I suppose he simply saw it as a last defiance. He chose not to participate in FOXHOUND’s dummy war, and instead destroyed himself and their precious mechs. Of course, they had the blueprints to build more 008s, to advance them rapidly, and the formula for the serum was intact as well. So it wasn’t like he thought he could truly stop it… I think it was more of a personal stand. It was a last expression of his will, to die honorably refusing to fight for something he didn’t believe in.”

“He reached a point where even betraying his friends was worth it just to spit in FOXHOUND’s face.”

“I don’t think he saw it as a betrayal, no, but as a necessary action. You were in line to become the next serum soldier prototype, Snake. All of your team were.”

“So it was a mercy killing.”

Snake saw the back of Gray Fox’s head, the planes of his shoulders, sitting alone in the mountains among the pines, amidst the quiet.

“Yes,” said Dr. Hunter. “That’s exactly what it was.”

Snake was silent. They both were.

Fox… Even after his sacrifice, Snake had still become a guinea pig, huh? Were all noble actions just useless bursts of humanity in the end?

“Why are you telling me this?” Snake asked softly. “Because of your ‘trip’?”

She sighed. “As I told you, I’m here for information. This is currently the top mech facility in the world. I’ve been doing my own snooping the entire time I’ve been here… And I finally stumbled upon something. A cover-up.” She lifted a hand to brush hair behind her ear, and it was shaking slightly, leaving behind tiny marks in her knee… “Benedict Miller has been dead for four years.”

“What?”

“He must have been a lonely man. No one knows this, not even the U.S. government or the military. The only way I found out was through a highly encrypted file… A secret autopsy report, here in the commander’s labs. Like a trophy. Hubris.”

“If Miller is dead, who’s commanding this base?”

“That I don’t know. Except that he must be very dedicated. The sort of plastic surgery necessary to look completely like another person… He certainly has connections.”

“How can the military not know about this?”

“There’s a lot the military doesn’t know about FOXHOUND.”

Did she have to answer every question with another goddamn jab, another riddle? He leaned back in his chair roughly, running a hand through his hair to keep the violence out of his posture. “FOXHOUND was destroyed.”

“Your unit was destroyed, Snake.” She wasn’t fazed. “FOXHOUND as a whole is much larger. The man Frank took his orders from—did you ever meet him?”

“No. I only knew his codename. Big Boss.”

“I worked for Big Boss as well, for a time.”

“Doctor…” Snake leaned forward again on his elbows, his discarded cigarette butt limp and wet on the desk in front of him. “I don’t understand. FOXHOUND, led by this Big Boss, what are they?”

“Right now they are a rogue military organization working toward its own ends.” 

“Under the international community’s nose? How is that possible?”

“Snake, the military, the U.S. government, the governments of the world… These bodies don’t know what’s really running this planet. There’s a deeper organization. In a world of space travel, of contact with alien societies… surely human politics become inconsequential. Our countries will continue to work towards their own individual aims against each other, but underneath that is a worldwide center, our human ambassadors if you will. The real people who control Earth within this very large universe.”

“You’re talking like alien contact didn’t start with that monster attacking Fukushima.”

“It didn’t. We have been part of an intergalactic community for a very long time. This information of course has been carefully guarded from the squabbling superpowers of the world. Only a very deep core organization represents us on the global level… They call themselves The Patriots. They’re the ones who run this place. FOXHOUND was their black ops, and mechs were their cornerstone. The mechs were always supposed to go into space, to fight in an intergalactic arena.”

“An alien deterrence program?”

“I suppose you can call it that. But then FOXHOUND went rogue. Shortly after your unit’s destruction, Big Boss separated from the Patriots… I don’t know much beyond that, but I don’t think they are friendly bedfellows. I think they’re both bidding for control of this planet.”

“And now somehow aliens have gotten involved too.”

“Exactly. I’m not sure how much influence the Patriots have on this base here, or whether it’s all just a ploy, letting the militaries of the world believe they’re doing something to protect us all from these alien ‘invaders’, all the while destroying the aliens’ corpses and any further evidence. The Patriots must know where these aliens come from, why they’re fighting against us here. But I can’t seem to find that information. However…”

“What?”

“Our fake Commander Miller. I am almost certain he is from FOXHOUND. He’s up to something on his own terms.”

“What’s FOXHOUND’s goal? Are they anti-Earth or something?”

“I don’t know. As I told you, I used to work for FOXHOUND myself. But I left after Frank died… I didn’t follow Big Boss’ new regime. I refused to work anymore for the people who killed my brother. Even I have my own kind of honor.”

“FOXHOUND vs the Patriots… Who are the good guys, exactly?”

She smiled again, too fatigued for that pride from earlier in the conversation, but still leering. “After all this, you still believe in ‘good guys’, Snake? You really are unexpectedly charming.”

Snake made a gruff noise, but it got caught in his throat when he heard something from the other side of the door.

From far away, but enough for paranoid ears to hear easily…

Footsteps were approaching Dr. Hunter’s office.

Snake turned on his stealth camouflage reflexively, his cigarette butt disappearing under an invisible hand and then into his pocket. “I’ll ask you again,” he hissed. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Dr. Hunter however was calm, a more honest calm than she’d held for this entire conversation. It was almost like she was awaiting a death blow, not only that but craving it. “I believe I have reached the limit of what secrets I can uncover on this base,” she said, speaking quickly and quietly. “I have also come to believe that you have the power to go further than me. You’re the only person who can finish my work.”

“ _How_?”

“There are humans manning those mechs fighting alongside the aliens. Serum soldiers, just like you.”

Snaked remembered the old man. Accelerated aging, pushing their bodies to the limit… Was that what Snake would look like too in a few years? “Yeah, I found that out.”

“You need to contact them somehow. They might be the only humans in the universe fighting against FOXHOUND and the Patriots both.”

He had more questions. It felt like an infinite number of goddamn questions.

But at that point, the footsteps reached the office door, and then it was thrown open, forcefully enough that the doorknob thudded loudly against the wall.

It was Commander Miller, or whoever this man was with his blond hair and sunglasses, flanked by four armed guards.

For a sickening moment, Snake thought they had found out about his snooping, that something might have happened to Hal…

But as he sat stock still, they seemed not to notice him there in the chair under his stealth camo.

“Dr. Hunter,” said Miller, striding into the room with a casualness belied by the guards constantly shifting in subtle formation around him. They pointed their guns at Dr. Hunter, who was still facing forward, refusing to look back at the door.

Miller didn’t seem to mind, coming to stand in front of her and bending at the waist to reach her level.

“Naomi,” he said. “I did think it curious when you so suddenly took all the pilots off their treatment. I checked your records, and what do you know. They’re all gone. Your serum formula, your patient treatment histories, every single file quite expertly deleted. That’s rather against the rules, isn’t it?”

She was looking straight at Snake still, and seemed to speak more to him than to Miller.

“I’ve made my choice,” she said. “I’ve decided I will no longer work under this establishment, Commander. I know I can’t reverse what I’ve done or stop you forever… But even if I can inconvenience you for now, that’s probably better than anything I’ve done in my life.”

Snake understood now what she’d meant when she said she was going on a trip.

A vast understatement, to be sure. She had betrayed Miller, and as expected here he was with an entourage to escort her off of the facility, into whatever government prison he wanted her in.

Or with all that she’d revealed to Snake, perhaps ‘government’ wasn’t a proper modifier. Would she be at the mercy of FOXHOUND? Or the Patriots?

Snake stared at the back of Miller’s head, and he could almost hear the sneer in the imposter’s voice.

“I’m sure you think that’s heroic,” Miller said. “If you ask me, it’s foolish. It’ll take some time, sure, but we’ll uncover that serum with or without your compliance. We have all the time in the world.” He held his arms out expansively. “You’re the only one here whose resources have run dry, and of your own free will. Pity. All this time I thought you were an intelligent woman.”

“So did I,” she said distantly, and finally she stood. This was her last moment of grace, rising slowly, long legs unfurling as she perched on her heels. Then she was bullied out of the room, stumbling under the rushing and prodding of the guards’ guns.

“I’m sorry,” she said on her way out.

Miller scoffed loudly, but Snake alone knew that message wasn’t for the commander.

The office was eerily quiet once they were gone, as their footfalls grew more and more distant and finally muffled into silence.

For a long time, Snake just sat there alone, thinking over Dr. Hunter’s last words.

Then finally he willed himself to stand again.

He couldn’t just stay invisible forever.

x

Slowly and carefully, Snake returned to Hal’s office.

Hal looked like an absolute wreck, fidgeting at his desk with his computer, but he noticed Snake immediately, even before he switched off the stealth camouflage and sank into the extra chair.

Hal got up and was at Snake’s side in an instant, as Snake ran a hand over his face, the stealth camouflage bulky on his arm.

“Snake?” Hal asked, a firm hand falling to Snake’s shoulder. “You look like you saw a ghost in there.”

“Dr. Hunter just got carted away.”

“I know. I saw through the cameras. Thought it would be you at first, from the look of those guards…”

Snake huffed out a bitter laugh and shook his head.

Again, he told Hal everything.

Hal remained at his side, leaning ever more heavily into Snake until Snake wasn’t sure who was fortifying whom anymore. He kept quiet, his gaze resolved to stay on Snake’s face as he spoke, even as his eyes grew wide.

When Snake finished he expected Hal to start his typical nervous pacing around the office, but he didn’t, as if frozen in place, stuck to Snake like a limpet.

Snake was the one to finally look away.

“Guess I’m more expendable than I thought,” Snake muttered. “All the pilots on this base… We’re all running at death full speed. Great punchline.”

“Don’t think about it, Snake,” Hal said with a stern sort of finality.

Unexpectedly, the hand on Snake’s shoulder crept up to cup the side of Snake’s jaw, partly upon his neck and partly upon his cheek, turning his face gently back to meet Hal’s gaze again. Hal was white as a sheet, haggard and messy under five o’clock shadow, but his gray-blue eyes were steadfast. Somehow, Snake couldn’t see any sadness in Hal’s normally so transparent expression. It was like he’d decided he was finished with sadness.

“It’s not all about loss…” he said. “There’s hope for you yet, for everybody. But we need to tell them. This can’t go on anymore.”

“Hunter covered her trail. Even if we did have access to her records, she destroyed the important bits. A great Fuck You to our phony commander, but without any sort of evidence our hands are tied too.”

“What about Meryl?” Hal pressed. “She’ll believe you. And she has a huge network of support in the ranks. She’s everybody’s idol.”

Snake wanted to look away, glower at the floor, but Hal’s hand was still pressed against his jaw, holding him in place so he couldn’t hide from Hal’s words.

Would Meryl believe him? A crazy story about alien wars? What even was he to Meryl now?

“I don’t know if I can trust anybody in this mess,” Snake admitted. “Right now all I’ve got is—“

His sentence dropped, but Hal understood. Hal’s lips thinned, and his thumb brushed across Snake’s cheek, upsetting the small hairs near his ear. He moved to finally pull away, give Snake some space, but Snake caught his wrist, pressing his fingers tightly to the delicate bones at Hal’s pulse point.

“Before anything else, I need to sleep,” Snake murmured. It was true, but he doubted he would be able to.

Hal nodded. “Stay here,” he said. “Or let me come with you back to your room. I mean… It might help to have somebody.”

I’ll watch over you. Something like that.

Snake stood, his joints aching, and dropped Hal’s wrist in the process, although they still wound up beside each other, like their bodies were drawn to one another, to some sense of familiarity amidst all this craziness.

“No more Dr. Hunter,” Snake said, just to break the heaviness in the air. But his words only managed to load even more onto his shoulders. He was so tired.

“She didn’t rat us out to Miller,” Hal said slowly. “I guess in her own way she was noble.”

Snake was tempted to call this a gross oversimplification, but instead he was silent, reflective. Sometimes Hal’s simplistic morals were truer than anything else. In the end, Naomi’s last stand had been similar to her brother’s. Perhaps Snake respected that.

But with that respect came pain, a whisper of that pain he associated so strongly with Gray Fox.

“Useless bursts of humanity,” Snake said, ridiculously, without any sort of sense.

Instead of confusion, Hal laughed, quiet and strained.

“Nothing human is ever useless, Snake,” he said, and pressed an idle kiss to the side of Snake’s mouth. “You know that.”

x

That night they both slept on the office floor, uncomfortable and gawky but side by side, with Snake’s fingers curled loosely in the hem of Hal’s shirt.

But there was no time for them, even in this.

As the compound slept, three alien mechs came to hang over the sea, watching the lights of the base from afar. They appeared on Miller’s radar at control, but they didn’t approach any closer even as he schemed.

They simply waited.

x

end chapter five


End file.
